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EDGAR 


'T 




FAWCETT 



NEW YORK 

BELFORT) COMILANV, PLBI. [SUERS 
18-22 East i8th Street 
[Publishers of Belford''s Magazine\ 


e Belford American Novel Series. No. 25. Annual Subscription, $15.00. Issued weekly 
Entered at the New York Post Office as second-class matter. April 14, 1890. 



A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


(Siigar iran)cctl’0 lUritinge. 


Fiction. 

Rutherford. 

A Gentleman of Leisure. 

A Hopeless Case. 

An Ambitious Woman. 

Tinkling Cymbals. 

The Adventures of a Widow. 
The Confessions of Claud. 

The House at High Bridge, 
Olivia Delaplaine. 

A Man’s Will. 

Douglas Duane. 

Divided Lives. 

Miriam Balestier. 

A Demoralizing Marriage. 

The Evil that Men Do. 

SOLARION. 

Fabian Dimitry. 

Poetry. 

Fantasy and Passion. 

Song and Story. 

Romance and Revery. 

Humorous Verse. 

_ HE Buntling Ball. 

The New King Arthur. 

Miscellaneous. 

Agnosticism, and Other Essays. 

(With preface by Robert G. Ingersoll.) 

Social Silhouettes. 


A 


Daughter of Silence 

A NOVEL 



edgar'^awcett 

n 

Author of “ Divided Lives “ Miriam Balestiet\” “ The Evil That 
Men Do Agnosticism f etc., etc. 



NEW YORK 

BELFORD COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

18-22 East 18th Street. 


\ V 


\ 



Copyriglit, 1890, 

By BELFORD COMPAKF. 


< 


TO MY FRIEND, 

WILLIAM OUTTEJRSON WOOD, 

OF DURHAM, ENGLAND, 

WITH REGRETS THAT I HAVE NO GIFT MORE 
SUITED TO HIS SUNNY MIND AND WINSOME NATURE 
THAN THIS TALE, SO SOMBRE IN COLORING, 

OF destiny’s MOST BITTER DEFEATS 

Loyidoriy Oct.y 1889. v 



A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


I. 

New Yoek, that has sneered at Hoboken for 
half a century, may one day wake to the fact that 
it is neither wholly hideous nor vulgar. Indeed, 
there are parts of it which are clad with a quiet, 
parochial prettiness, and still others to which the 
glitter and majesty of the near river lend no triv- 
ial charm. 

On one especial September afternoon the little 
park at the end of Hudson Street was a salubrious 
delight. The trees had lately taken tints of au- 
tumnal yellow, the breeze had just enough tang of 
chill in its flutter, and northward, across the river’s 
band of spangled sapphire, glimmered monstrous 
New York, with a haze of dense masts along its 
wharves, and with all its interior labyrinthine 
ugliness mellowed into an effect soft as one of 
Corot’s auroral canvases. 

A young man named Guy Arbuthnot had paused 
to look at the enchanting mezzotint of the town, 
with its unnumbered steeples traced against the 


8 


A DAUGHTEB OF SILENCE. 


blue clarity of the horizon. His dress was both 
negligent and happy, but also gentlemanly. His 
open coat displayed a white flannel shirt beneath 
it, whose collar of the same stuff overlay a tie 
of dark silk knotted at the throat. It was a 
strong throat, with cords in it that stood out 
from the tanned skin, and somehow it prepared an 
eye which might already have traversed his tall, 
sinewy shape from below upward, for the lean 
jaws, delicate lips and close-matted auburn curls 
that helped to give him the air of a Greek athlete. 

There are some men, however, whom very little 
training will put into just this apparent state. 
Guy Arbuthnot would have hated to be called 
a cultivator of muscle. It had always been his 
impression that the man who enters into a willing 
bondage to his biceps becomes the servant of a 
very tyrannic master. Presently he turned from 
the spectacular view on which he had seemed so 
intent, and walked musingly anywhither, as it 
were, with bent head and a cane dangling between 
the hands which he had clasped behind him. He 
long afterward remembered how it befell him that, 
as he at length lifted his eyes from the ground, 
tliey lighted on precisely the human being who 
had for some time been engaging his thoughts. 
As this person swam into Guy’s vision his face 
darkly flushed. Advancing toward him was a^ 
young woman neatly and not over-modishly dressed.^ 


A DAT/GBTUB OF SILENCE. 9 

She presented to him a figure that the past few 
weeks had rendered familiar in a way menacing 
to his mental peace. 

Lightning alone has the speed possible at cer- 
tain periods to thought, and no doubt between the 
two there is always a subtle electric cousinship. 
Before he knew it, Guy had told himself many 
things about this young woman which were no less 
alert than pregnant. “ I’ve a sort of right to speak 
to her,” ran his musings. “We’re neighbors, 
or something highly like it. She’s tremendously 
handsome, and she’s acted for a good while as if 
she knew I thought her so. Not that she’s been 
the least bold or fast. Life’s more primitive over 
here than it is across the river. A fellow can do 
here from pure good-feeling what he’d be called a 
cad if he should do in town . . . Shall I speak to 
her? Why not? If she shows the least annoy- 
ance I can only have made a fool of myself, and 
can only tell her, in fleet but eternal farewell, how 
sorry I am for blundering into a dunce-like bit of 
sociability. Confound it ! I hate a snub, in cir- 
cumstances of this kind, as Mephisto hated a 
church-organ! But I’m no Mephisto — not one 
in this case, most certainly. I’m merely a young 
man who takes a leap over a hurdle of convention, 
with no vicious instincts and with some that are 
rather benevolent.” 

Very soon after this, Guy raised his hat and 


10 A DAUGHTUR OF' SILENCFJ. 

paused at the side of the damsel whom he had 
reached. 

“ May I have the pleasure,” he said, with that 
accent of true courtesy which no refined woman 
can ever mistake, “ of hoping you feel as glad as I 
do that these dull, rainy days have at last given 
us this beautiful weather^ ” 

It was not at all a formal speech, as he phrased 
it, but it was thrown out at a venture, and if 
volcanic resentment had met him in response he 
would not have been unprepared for so distressing 
a reception. Indeed, he had even guiltily observed 
a strolling policeman not far away, and had let 
consciousness grasp the possibility of a rebuff at 
once droll and humiliating. 

But, to his own surprise, the young woman re- 
vealed no surprise whatever. She simply fixed 
her light, strange, crystal eyes upon him and 
smiled faintly. 

“ Yes,” she answered, not without graciousness, 
and yet as indifferently as if she had been telling 
some nurse-maid in the park what was the time of 
day, “it is a nice afternoon, isn’t it? ” 

She moved slowly onward, and there was some- 
thing about the sobriety and ease of her walk that 
made Guy feel suddenly quite sanctioned in keep- 
ing pace with it. 

“ I’ve seen you a good many times,” he soon re- 
commenced, with cordiality, interest and deference 


A DAUGHTm OF SILENCF. 


11 


all seeming to meet in his manner. “ Perhaps 
you know that I’ve a room in your street. I’m 
a few doors nearer the park than you are.” 

His companion nodded. “ Oh, yes, I’ve seen 
you,” she said, so coolly that he at once began to 
suspect her of covert and lazy irony. But no, her 
face wore a gravity no .guile could have copied. 
He waited for her to say something more, — he 
waited, in fact, with a tingling eagerness. But 
not another word came. She had no apparent 
wish to repel him ; she was evidently not ill- 
pleased that he should walk with her here in the 
breezy park. Whatever her silence meant, disap- 
proval was not among its definitions. 

Could stupidity be ? Her creamy face, with the 
placid line of its lips and its large eyelids, like 
the petals of a camellia, did not bespeak intelli- 
gence. Guy forgot that there was any such thing 
-as intelligence while he watched her perfect re- 
pose. The looseness of her sleeves affected him 
in the way of a delicious clemency, since it sliowed 
him a full tapering arm that made him wish he 
were an artist and could steal it for some budding 
Juno. 

“ What a splendid, still, white creature she is,” 
he was soon thinking. “ No doubt she has very 
few ideas; it would take from her maidenly 
majesty, somehow, if she had too many.” 

On this theory of non-possession Guy began to 


12 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 


supply her with a few. Talk always came easy 
to him, and as he was a young gentleman with very 
little to conceal, it swiftly took the turn of harm- 
less egotism. He told her that his real home was 
New York, but that he had taken a room here in 
Hoboken because chance had made him aware 
what a pleasant and tranquil little place this par- 
ticular part of it was. The chance, Guy further- 
more explained, had been his membership of the 
tennis-club not far away — he supposed she knew 
all about that. He didn’t imagine he would ever 
have come at all to Hoboken if it hadn’t been for 
the tennis-club. 

Here it occurred to him that she might naturally 
care to ask him why he had taken a room across 
the river, with what purpose he had taken it, and 
whether or no he dwelt there permanently. He 
would have relished from her some coy proof that 
she had prettily spied upon his in-comings and out- 
goings and that she had discovered his residence 
in her street to be only a diurnal one and his ab- 
sences during the night-hours invariable. 

But she asked him no questions whatever. When 
he paused she turned her shining, icy eyes once 
again upon him and let the vermilion curve of her 
lips melt into a smile that gave fascinating assur- 
ance of her even and flawless teeth. Just to see 
that smile at so short a distance away, Guy would 
have risked worse perils than those which her 


A DAUGHTUB OF SILENCE. 


13 


dreaded scorn had already made him dream of. 
The smile, too, had an intimate sweetness about it 
that seemed to say ‘‘ Go on ; I enjoy listening to 
you.” Guy felt that with so enchanting a spur 
to his volubility he could indulge it with the vigor 
of a new Scheherezade. 

He had no such romantic tales to tell, however, 
as those of the glib-tongued princess. “ I hope you 
won’t think me horridly conceited,” he went on, 
“ for talking such a lot about my own affairs. But 
I — I don’t like concealments of any sort, and since 
you had been — a — neighborly enough to treat my 
salutations kindly, I thought it best that you 
shouldn’t be left in the least doubt of who I am. 
Which brings me to the matter of my name,” he 
proceeded, with a laugh. And soon afterward he 
added: “Now that I’ve given 3'ou my name, do 
you mind letting me learn yours ? ” 

“ No,” she replied suavely, but with marble com- 
posure. “ It’s Brenda Monk.” 

“Brenda Monk,” repeated Guy. “How charm- 
ing ! It fits you like a gown or a glove.” 

“Does it?” she said, lifting her brows a little 
and speaking with a most matter-of-fact voice. 
“ How do you mean that it does ? I don’t under- 
stand.” 

“Neither do I!” exclaimed Guy merrily. “But 
it does ! . . And you’ve lived here a long time. Miss 
Monk?” 


14 ^ DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

“Yes; but we’ve lived in New York as w^ell.” 
She mentioned two addresses that had a most 
rurally “up town” sound to her hearer. “We 
came here about six years ago.” 

“ And would you think me dreadfully impudent 
if I asked you just whom you mean by ‘ we ’ ? ” 

“ My father, my aunt and myself.” She said 
this as though the saying of it bored her somewhat, 
yet not quite enough to cause any severe ripple in 
her general indifference. 

“ Ah, a small family, that,” ventured Guy. 

“ We’ve a small house.” 

“ But a very neat and pretty one.” 

“ Do you think it pretty ? I don’t.” 

“ Oh, well, it might be a great deal uglier. 
There are houses a great deal uglier in the town.” 

“ Yes — of course.” 

They walked on, and Guy’s fingers twitched 
restlessly as they clasped the knob of his cane. 
Here was a girl of positively glacial apathy. Noth- 
ing seemed to affect her immobile serenity. And 
yet she had the art of captivating. It was not 
solely her beauty that caused her to do so. What 
then was it? Her beauty plus the pique engen- 
dered by her languid unconcern? No; for she did 
not inflict pique ; she was too complaisant, too 
obviously amiable. It was an elusive combination 
of elements, fleetly concluded Guy — a shadowy 
yet distinct suggestion that underneath her snow 


A daitgrt:eb of silence. 


15 


lay some quality of ardor, of flame, of passion. 

Still, the young man would have admitted, even 
then, while under the spell of Brenda Mpnk’s per- 
sonality, that perhaps his estimate had been one 
shaped wholly from the fantasy of delusion. 

Breaking the little pause that had ensued be- 
tween them, he suddenly said, with a secret aim to 
disturb by unprepared attack what looked like so 
impregnable an equipoise : 

“ And so. Miss Monk, you don’t care a feather 
about why I’ve taken that room a few houses away 
from you ! It’s horribly disappointing for me to 
realize this, but I’m forced, nevertheless, to decide 
that you do not care.” 

“ Oh, yes,” she said, in her voice that purled as 
if no fervid inflection could break the smoothness 
of its flow; “I do care. Why do you think I 
don’t? You’re only there in the day-time; or is 
that wrong ? Don’t you live there, then ? ” 

This was expansive loquacity compared with 
w^hat Guy had thus far succeeded in attaining. 

“ I don’t live there,” he hastened to answer ; “ I 
only work there.” 

“Work?” 

“ Yes. It’s quiet, and I get away from lots of 
distractions over in the city. The whole idea was 
a fad of mine. I like it; I’m immensely pleased 
wdth it.” And then he added daringly : “I shall 
like it a good deal better, too, now that you have 


16 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

extended to me the privilege of your acquaint- 
ance.” 

Not a muscle in her beautiful, restful face be- 
trayed that she either comprehended or enjoyed 
this rather sugared phrase. 

“You say that you work there,” she replied, a 
little more measuredly than she had before spoken. 
“ How do you work ? At what ? ” 

His laughter flew out on the volatile breeze, and 
was so buoyant and jocund that it seemed almost 
to leave a visible flash behind it. “I am not a 
shoemaker or a tailor,” he said, “ though my work, 
I admit, is of a sedentary kind. I’m writing a 
book.” 

“ A book ? ” she queried. “ Is it a story? ” 

“ Yes, in a way.” 

“A novel?” 

“No, it’s the story of a people. They were once 
a very great people, but they’re all dust now. The 
Aztecs, of Mexico. I dare say you’ve heard of 
them, and of Cortes.” 

“ Oh, you mean a history? ” 

“Yes. I’m trying to write one.” 

“But there’s one already written,” she said, 
turning her eyes on him again. 

He had already sworn to himself, weeks ago, 
that she was not — that she could not be — an igno- 
rant or unlettered girl. Certain refinements in her 
idiom, her intonation, had of late confirmed this 


A DAUGFITEB OF SILENCE, 


17 


.former belief. He now said, with a glad note in 
his voice and a blithe sparkle of his blue eyes : 

“ Ah, you know Prescott’s book, then ? ” 

“Yes; I’ve read it. It was one of the books 
father used to make me read when — when he took 
more charge of me than he does now. I thought 
it very nice : I enjoyed it,” she added, as if she 
had been referring to a plate of soup or an edible 
cut of filet. 

“ It is very nice,” smiled Guy, “ but it isn’t 
the truth; it’s all garnished and ornamented to 
please people. It isn’t history; it’s half fiction, 
fable, imagination.” 

She responded with a gentle nod, which both 
disappointed and aggravated him. He wanted her 
to question him further concerning his task — to 
show that he at least had faintly pricked her cu- 
riosity, her sense of good-fellowship, or, it might 
even have been, her intellectual sympathy, But 
the nod was all. He had a chilled feeling that if 
he should abruptly raise his hat and leave her, she 
would simply give his departure another acquies- 
cent inclination of her enchanting head, and that 
there would be an end of everything between 
them. 

It was now on the verge of his lips to make 
some new remark that would again draw speech 
from her, even though a response ever so ordinary 
and prosaic, when he perceived that her attention 


18 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


had been attracted by the figure of a young man 
seated on a bench several yards away. 

They had taken, by this time, a rather long 
semicircular walk, and had reached that part of 
the park which lay furthest off from the luminous 
river. As his gaze swept the seated form of the 
young man, Guy remembered him, though indefi- 
nitely. That rather dishevelled attire, that olive 
face and pair of dark troubled eyes, and more than 
all, that somewhat sarcastic mouth, clear-seen be- 
low the silky fringes of a scant yet felicitous mous- 
tache, appealed sensibly to recollection. 

In another minute Brenda Monk had bowed, 
and as she and Guy drew nearer to the occupant 
of the bench, he rose with a slightly haughty and 
sullen air. He carried two brown-covered books 
under his arm, and on one of them was the patch 
of tell-tale print that evidenced it had been bor- 
rowed from a circulating library. 

He fixed his cloudy, discontented eyes for an 
instant upon Guy as he approached. Then he 
transferred his notice entirely to Brenda. 

“I’ve watched you for quite a good while,” 
he said to her, in a voice lowered yet plainly 
audible. 

“ Have you ? ” she returned, “ I didn’t see you 
till just now.” 

The dark young man gave a bitter smile. “ Do 
you often pick up new friends like this in the 


A DAUGIITIJB OF SILENCE. 


19 


park?” he inquired, with unveiled satire, though 
without any fresh glance in Guy’s direction. 

Brenda looked sedately amused. 

“ This gentleman’s a neighbor,” she said. 

Oh, he is ! ” 

Guy here felt an indignant flurry, though he 
quickly controlled it. Who was this shabby-look- 
ing fellow with the worried eyes, who chose to 
jerk sidelong impertinences at himself? Clearly 
no brother of Brenda Monk, and unless the 
signs of blood lied as almost never before, no 
kindred either. But Guy Arbuthnot, within the 
bounds of dignity, had a temper infallibly sweet. 
He was always making allowances for people, and 
he made them now, swayed b}^ his old genial in- 
stinct. He looked straight at the new-comer with 
his artless, lucid glance and said, with only enough 
hint of contest in his voice to give it the appropri- 
ate hardy ring : 

“ Miss Monk has been good enough to stroll 
about the park for a little while in my company. 
I feared at first, that she would think me far too 
bold, in spite of having seen my face so often. 
But I was mistaken here, for she has done me the 
goodness of showing pardon instead of displeasure.” 

No sooner had these words left Guy than he be- 
came aware that they had wrought most amiably 
with the intruder for whom he had designed them. 
Much of its rebellious, brooding look seemed to 


20 


A DA TIGHTER OF SILENCE. 


leave his swarthy face, and the books he held were 
embarrassedly shifted from one armpit to another. 
Just as her friend would probably have made some 
sort of labored and awkward reply, Brenda came 
to his rescue by saying in her usual tones of cool 
demure ness : 

“ Mr. Guy Arbuthnot . . . Mr. Allaire.’' 

“ Glad to meet you, Mr. Allaire,” said Guy, ex- 
tending his hand. “ Miss Monk gives my Chris- 
tian name as if I were a distinguished person ; but 
I assure you I’m not.” 

“Mr. Allaire is, though,” said Brenda Monk. 
“ He writes, just as you do.” 

“Writes, eh? does he?” replied Guy, in his 
most cordial voice, and that was one which could 
be very cordial indeed. 

Allaire looked down and slightly shook his head. 
“ Oh, never mind what 1 do,” he murmured. Soon 
he had asked Guy one or two civil questions, and 
shown a change of demeanor that was like the 
transition from storm to sun. Guy could ill ac- 
count for it, but if he could have had a single 
glimpse into the man’s nature he might have 
reached prompt solution of the mystery. 

They soon left the park, a very concordant trio, 
and by the time they had reached Brenda Monk’s 
little two-storied brick house Guy felt that he had 
received a kind of tacit permission to call there in 
the future. 


A davgbti:b of silence. 


21 


She gave him her large, white, soft, gloveless 
hand just as she was about to ascend her stoop. 
He had been prepared to see Allaire follow her ; it 
had struck him that perhaps they were friends on 
the easiest terms of intimacy, and that this dark- 
complexioned individual who had been watching 
her ramble through the park, might now have his 
reasons for a little private interview. But to his 
surprise Allaire remained on the sidewalk. Guy 
sprang up the steps and rang the door-bell, as 
men of breeding usually do when they accompany 
women to the doors of their abodes. But Brenda 
did not need this courtesy; she had already drawn 
out her latch-key. . . Guy began, soon afterward, as 
he and Allaire walked onward side by side, to feel 
convinced that the latter had made him an object 
of close if rather furtive observation. 

“ I wonder who and what he can be,” reflected 
our young historian. “ I should like to find him 
out, to exploit him, to hit on the real reasons for 
his having presumed to arraign her as he did.” 

He could scarcely speak to Allaire, at first, after 
Miss Monk had left them, so acute was the emo- 
tional disarray caused by his recent meeting with 
that young lady. 

She had disappointed him horribly. He had ex- 
pected from her a fresh and vivid experience, and 
what had he obtained? Merely a recognition of 
her drowsy nullity, her inane torpor. He was im- 


22 


A DAUGHTER OE SILENCE, 


pelled to decide that he had never met a girl so 
physically charmiug who possessed such a min- 
imum of soul, of spiritual vitality, of native gra- 
ciousness. She was not ill-reared, yet how had she 
been reared in so thwart and sour a fashion ? He 
thought of other women whom he had admired, 
and compared her with them to her calamitous dis- 
advantage. 

And yet the strain and pull of a former captiva- 
tion lingered with him and would not subside. 
Walking near Allaire, his revery had almost made 
him forget, for a few seconds, that any one accom- 
panied him. But suddenly wakening to this fact, 
he said, in his affable and facile style : 

“Won’t you come up to my den? It’s just 
here.” (At this moment they reached the house 
in which his writing-room was located.) “ I can 
offer you a drop of good whiskey, if you choose. 
I don’t take it often, myself, but it’s there.” 

“ Thanks,” Allaire said. His next words were 
hesitant and diffident. “I don’t want the whis- 
key, Mr. Arbuthnot; I seldom touch it. I some- 
times drink a glass of beer in the evenings, but 
that’s all. I — I do want, however,” he proceeded, 
while the heavy darkness of his eyes took a glisten- 
ing, humid richness, “ to tell you how gentleman- 
like was your treatment of me a little while ago. 
I — I didn’t behave a bit well — I know it, and I’m 
sorry for it. ” 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. ^3 

Guy softly clapped the shoulder of the speaker 
with one hand. “ Don’t give it another thought,” 
he said, and at once the introspective query darted 
through his mind: “Would I show this fellow 
more than a grain of patience if it were not for 
herr* 


24 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 


II. 

He treated Allaire with considerably more than 
patience during the next hour or two. Even the 
calm of Brenda Monk might have been stirred 
with consternation if she could have seen Guy’s 
hospitable politeness after the ascent of her friend 
into his apartment. As it was, Brenda had gone 
indoors with her habitual leisurely step and still 
mien. The little hall which she entered was a 
commonplace region of cheap oilcloth and rudi- 
mentary graining. She avoided the small parlor, 
where some touches of taste relieved the prevalent 
plainness, and went upstairs into a sad-colored 
bedroom at whose doorway she encountered her 
aunt. 

Miss Gabriella Monk had a face and figure that 
harshly challenged the romanticism of her name. 
She was a big, ponderous woman, with chronic 
eyeglasses, a mottled skin and a distinct mous- 
tache. The neighborhood abhorred her for her 
arrogance, and since she had settled here in Hobo- 
ken with her brother and niece, she had managed 
to keep on speaking-terms with hardly more than 
five or six residents of the adjacent houses. It was 
so natural for Brenda to hear her voice set in a dis- 
consolate or scolding key that the girl (though 


A DAUGirr^E OF SlLENCF. 25 

sure of her real goodness of heart) would perhaps 
have been startled at any less friendly reception 
than the one that now SAviftly met her. 

“ So you’re gadding about again for hours, miss, 
and not caring what becomes of things at home ! ” 

Brenda sat down in a big, old-fashioned rocking- 
chair and swayed herself softly. She took no more 
notice of her aunt’s grumbling than if it had been 
the buzz of a fly in one of the window-panes. 
Almost as if she had been dreamily soliloquizing, 
so monotonous and expressionless were her tones, 
she narrated how Guy Arbuthnot had spoken to 
her in the park, how they had walked and talked 
together, and how she had found him as nice of 
address as both she and her aunt had some time 
ago remarked that he was nice of appearance. 

Miss Monk listened with clear concern. When 
Brenda finished she broke out with a sudden ex- 
clamation of sardonic joy. 

“ There ! He may be a person of real impor- 
tance. I don’t like what you say about his wriU 
ing^ though.” 

“Why, aunt Gabriella?” 

“ Oh, because people that write are usually 
poor ! ‘ Arbuthnot ’ — let me think. There are 

some New York Arbuthnots I’ve read about in the 
‘ society notes ’ of the newspapers.” 

Brenda gave one of her dim smiles. This was 
so like her aunt ! 


26 


A DAUGHTER OF SlLENCF. 


“ It was awful— perfectly awful,” continued 
Miss Monk, “for you, a lady born and bred, to let 
him speak to you like that ! If you’d done it in 
New York it would have been still worse. I hope 
none of the wretched, common, gossiping creatures 
all round us saw you. But I don’t perceive how 
that could be avoided. Well, let them talk, if it 
only turns out that you’ve done a good thing for 
yourself.” 

“ Done a good thing for myself ! ” repeated 
Brenda, vaguely. 

Miss Monk, who had taken a seat near her niece, 
leaned forward, with tightened lips and both plump 
hands at an oratorio elevation. 

“Don’t pretend, Brenda Monk, that you don’t 
understand me,” she protested. “ If something 
doesn’t happen before long, what are we to do? 
Where’s our rent-money to come from ? Where’s 
the money to come from for the food we must put 
in our mouths ? Oh,” wailed Miss Gabriella, with 
a plaintiveness Brenda had often heard before and 
that always betokened a mood of special memorial 
poignancy, “when I think of the difference be- 
tween what was and what is, I wonder my hair 
isn’t snow-white ! That I should be stuck off here, 
winter and summer, in this horrid little hole of 
a place — I, who might to-day have been Mrs. 
Senator Higginbotham if I’d chosen to lift a 
finger.” 


A BAlTGHTIjB OF SlLENCF. 27 

Brenda continued to rock herself softly. She 
had heard all this many a time before. One day it 
would be Mrs. Senator Higginbotham that her 
aunt might have become, and the next it would be 
Mrs. General Somebody Else. 

‘‘ Oh, that life in Washington ! ” continued Miss 
Gabriella. “How it compares with this! You 
never saw me, Brenda, did you, in the days when 
1 was a society-belle ? ” 

Brenda did not reply. Possibly it did not occur 
to her that there was any need of replying. 

“Well, Washington was once at my feet,” the 
elder lady still pursued. “If it hadn’t been for 
your father’s madness in money-matters we might 
all three of us be living there yet. For I shall 
never marry, now.” 

Brenda gave a slight start, at this. It was a 
variation of the usual programme. She had long 
ago got to doubt the multiplicity of senators, con- 
gressmen, generals and colonels whom her aunt 
had consigned to broken-hearted bachelorhood. 
But thus far her credulity had never been taxed to 
the extent of believing that Miss Gabriella could 
still regard herself as marriageable. 

“ No, never, Brenda. Marriage is not for a heart 
so haunted as mine I But it would all have been 
such a pleasure ! Your father and I would have 
shown you the brilliant Washington world. Per- 
haps in the summers we’d have gone abroad with 


28 


A DAt/GBTUB OF SILENCF. 


you. Girls with not half your looks, my dear, 
have become duchesses and princesses.” 

“ How is father’s headache ? ” asked Brenda, 
bluntly, at this point. She had no cravings for 
grandeurs and distinctions. She was as destitute of 
ambition as a pool is of billows. Her aunt’s lamen- 
tations over a past which she suspected of being 
more than half apocryphal, and yearnings after a 
future all glitter of gas and dazzle of jewels, bored 
and depressed her. She had always behaved as if 
she were satisfied enough with Hoboken. There 
were times when she had struck her aunt as being 
satisfied with the mere meat, drink and sleep of life. 

“ Your father’s headache ? ” now returned Miss 
Gabriella. “ I suppose it’s a good deal the same 
as it was, Brenda. He always acts as if he were 
annoyed, nowadays, when I speak more than ten 
words to him. It was so different in the old 
Washington times! His standing as an eminent 
physician, and also as a chemist of repute, made 
his brotherly fondness for me all the more delight- 
ful and important. . . Where are you going, 
Brenda?” 

“ Upstairs,” answered the girl, “ to see father 
for a few minutes.” 

Brenda quitted her aunt’s bedroom and mounted 
a narrow stairway, soon afterward passing into an 
apartment which would have amazed any new 
visitant by its tumultuous confusion of details. 


A BAUGHTEB OF SILENCE. 


29 


Chemical and electrical instruments were massed 
together in odd and reckless turmoil. An electro- 
magnetic apparatus stood in one corner, with jars 
of liquid grouped about it. In another corner was 
a galvanic battery, flanked by a spectroscope, a 
small table loaded with several cumbrous volumes 
and a retort that seemed to threaten with its rec- 
tangular spout the little collection of stained and 
rusted utensils just beneath it. An odor at once 
stale and penetrant met Brenda on the threshold 
of the chamber. She found her father just where 
she had expected to find him, on a frayed and effete 
lounge that rose, oddly human in its suggestion, 
from the mechanical chaos. He was a wan, worn 
man, who looked, while he lay there, as if he might 
be no taller than his daughter, which would have 
made him, for his sex, below average height. He 
had a rough, coarse beard, with blotches of black 
in its pallor, while from above his sunken cheeks 
burned eyes much darker than Brenda’s, though 
not unlike hers in the limpid circular threads about 
their pupils. They had a certain wildness, how- 
ever, which was foreign to his child’s gaze as would 
have been radiance to an agate. 

Brenda was so used to his wide, bluff stare that 
she did not heed it. “ Father,” she said, as he half 
rose on one elbow, “isn’t your head any better? ” 
She had seated herself, by this time, on the edge of 
his lounge. 


30 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


“ A little,” he answered, “ a little.” His voice 
was weary and hoarse. “ I feared yon were your 
aunt, Brenda. She does bother me so. She’s for- 
ever talking about the bad air of this room and 
advising me to get out of it. As if I wouldn’t if I 
thought it made my head worse ! ” 

“ The air here isn’t fresh,” said Brenda, with an 
implication of reserved meanings in her laconic 
rejoinder. 

Theodore Monk rose slowly into a sitting pose. 
“ But I like it,” he said, “ I like it,” and he ploughed 
with one hand his gray mat of hair. “ I live in my 
studies here, as you know. It isn’t bad air to me ; 
it’s as fresh as new grass to a cow.” 

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Brenda. She had for 
some time thought her father insane, and it was 
not in her choice or purpose ever to cross or vex 
him. 

“You suppose so !” Monk suddenly broke out, 
with a laugh that somehow made his wrecked face 
look sadder than before. He threw an arm about 
Brenda’s firm neck and peered into her sweet, 
dull eyes. “ You sphinx, you ! ” he went on. 
“ You’re just like your mother ; you don’t care 
much about anything; you take the whole uni- 
verse for granted ; you let yourself drift along 
with the monstrous current.” 

He paused for a moment, but not as if he ex- 
pected her to respond. He had doubtless become 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


31 


accustomed to her taciturnity. In a brief while, 
after watching her with a flicker of smile between 
his bearded lips, he again said : . 

“Not that you haven’t brains. That’s why I 
called you a sphinx. She had, and so have you — 
I saw that again and again in those days when I 
taught you. They used to say that she was ice. 
But I knew differently. There were times when I 
trembled to think how much fire slept under the 
ice that she always seemed. . . I wonder if it’s 
the same with you, Brenda? ” He began to stroke 
her thick hair, that had glances in its undulations 
like those we see in wet silk. “ I wonder if it’s 
the same with you.” 

“ I’m not ice,” she said, “ and I’m not fire. Per- 
haps I’m only a stupid mixture of both.” 

“ No, you’re not ! ” he exclaimed. And then he 
withdrew his hand from her hair and began to 
shake his head sideways wdth a forlorn solemnity. 

“ You should have been married before this. 
You’re how old? I always forget. . . twenty — • 
what? But it makes no difference. You should 
have been married. . . Still,” (and here his face 
brightened and grew finely virile as if by some 
magic change) “you shall soon go where you can 
shine among the best of them. Your aunt Gabri- 
ella often twits me with the money I’ve lost and 
the place I’ve lost, and all that. But they’ll come 
back — they’ll come back.” 


32 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


Brenda hardly heeded these words of her father’s. 
Believing him demented, she had often heard him 
prophesy prosperity for his fallen household ; and 
she had long since dimly inferred that the hope of 
future gain was a craze which concerned his in- 
cessant broodings here in this malodorous retreat. 
It was some imagined discovery ; her aunt had 
pooh-poohed it and she had acquiesced, without a 
dream of dissent, in Gabriella’s pitying disdain. 

“And your head really is better?” she now in- 
quired, treating all that he had just said to her as 
if it had been the garrulity of a child. “ W ell, 
I’m glad, and now if you come out and get the 
air a little you’ll find that it’s ever so nice an 
evening.” As her words ended she saw that he 
was staring queerly at her once more, and this 
caused a shade of fatigue to cross her face. 

“ Brenda ! ” he burst forth again, and reached 
out for her hand. 

She gave it him, but rose as she did so, with a 
slight intolerant motion of the head. 

“ It will be soon ! ” he declared. “ Your good 
time is coming. Trust me. You do trust me, 
don’t you? You believe I’ve a great secret wait- 
ing to disclose to you ? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” she said. 

He had kept her hand in one of his own, but he 
now gently fondled it with both. “ I often think, 
Brenda, that I haven’t watched you enough lately. 


A BAUGHTEB OF SILENCE. 33 

There s your mother in you. Oh, I can see it! 
She once told me that if she hadn’t loved me as 
she did, she might— But never mind. You’ve 
kept straight. Eh, Brenda? You’ve never let 
the fire creep out from under the ice ? There’s 
danger, you know. You needn’t tell me there 
isn’t, for I’m sure. I saw what might have hap- 
pened with your mother. I ” 

Brenda snatched away her hand. In another 
second her cheeks had flushed and her eyes had 
clouded. There was arraignment, and also sus- 
picion, in the look Avith which she swept her 
father’s face. It seemed to cry out, “ What do you 
know ? ” in imperious questioning. 

Then she gave her head a slight, self-contempt- 
uous toss, as though mortified by having clad 
trifles with undue import. 

Not long after this, her aunt met her in one of 
the lower halls. “ How did you find your father’s 
head ? ” inquired Miss Gabriella. 

“Queerer than ever,” shot back Brenda grimly, 
as she passed her aunt. It was plain that she had 
been stung, and that the hurt still smarted. 


3 


34 


A uaugbti:b of silence. 


III. 

Guy Arbtjthnot’s room had been hideous when 
first the little sign outside had tempted him thither 
to examine it. He had smothered its ugliness, how- 
ever, beneath a few embellishments, and Allaire 
had hardly seated himself before he refei-red to it 
with admiration. 

“A very pretty room, Mr. Arbutlinot. There 
isn’t much of this decorative spirit in Hoboken, as 
I dare say you’re aware. I think that if you chose 
to exhibit your room for a day or two the people 
would flock here in droves.” 

“ Oh, it’s merely comfortable — that’s all,” said 
Guy, in his breezy way. “ Try one of these Egyp- 
tian cigarettes, won’t you ? ” 

“Thanks.” Allaire’s eyes wandered over the 
tufted divans, fleecy rugs and oriental draperies. 
“ Comfortable ! ” he said, with his white teeth 
flashing behind the melancholy smile that curled 
his olive lips. “That’s mild praise for it, cer- 
tainly.” Then his gaze lit on Guy’s desk, and he 
at once asked : 

“ There’s where you do your writing ? ” 

“Yes, when I can.” 

You mean you, niust wait for the inspirinsr 
mood ? ” ^ 


A DA UG H TUB OF SILENCE. 


35 


“I don’t lay the least claim to inspiration,” 
laughed Guy ; “but unless I’ve the clearest head 
and calmest nerves, I’m as afraid of my manuscript 
as if it were a policeman. Besides,” he went on, 
“ I don’t write every day. I’ve a lot of reading to 
do, as you’ll see by that pile of books over on yonder 
table.” He now explained the subject and nature 
of his work, swiftly and yet more in detail than he 
had done while speaking to Brenda. “ After 
leaving college,” he pursued, “ I spent some time 
in Mexico. Then I passed quite a good while in 
Europe — and especially Spain — rummaging among 
the libraries there. This particular kind of a his- 
tory, you know, had become a bee in my bonnet.” 
Here he broke off, and with his air of gentility and 
culture, said in self-apologetic tones : “ But I must 
not talk solely of my own exploits. Heaven knows 
they’re poor and unfinished enough. Did not Miss 
Monk tell me, by the way, that you also were a 
writer ? ” 

Allaire frowned a little, though as if alone in dis- 
approval of Brenda’s divulgence. “ I do write — 
yes,” he said. “ But it’s a very different kind of 
stuff from yours.” 

“ Yes ? May I ask what kind ? ” 

' “ I do stories for a weekly paper, though not 
under my own name.” Here a kind of wistfulness 
broke from Allaire’s dark eyes, and he leaned for- 
ward in the commodious tufted chair which his 


36 


A DA UGHTER OF SILENCE. 


host had given him. “ I do them under the name 
of ‘ Joyce Jarvis.’ I suppose you’ve never heard 
of any such writer ? ” 

“No,” said Guy. But he at once added, with 
his perfect courtliness of manner; “I read hardly 
any works of fiction nowadays, except a few French 
ones ; I’m rather fond of those, but somehow I let 
the English ones escape me.” 

“No doubt you’re very sensible not to read 
mine,” said Allaire, with his voice grown sombre 
and regretful. “ You’d probably think them rub- 
bish. Joyce Jarvis thinks them so.” 

“ They’re serial stories, then ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ And a good deal ” . . Here Guy shifted his legs 
and blew a smoke-cloud hastily from his nostrils ; 
“a good deal in the highly dramatic vein, per- 
haps?” 

“ Dramatic ? ” sneered Allaire, but only with the 
effect of sneering at himself. “ They're packed 
with blood-and-thunder nonsense ; that’s the square 
truth.” 

Guy had been watching his guest for some little 
space since the beginning of their converse, and it 
now had struck him that Allaire was a creature of 
curious type. His face had lines of beauty that 
were marred, though not obscured, by the constant 
shadowy discontent of his expression. He was far 
from the commonplace young person whom Guy 


A DAVGRTUB OF SILEJSfCR 


37 


had first pronounced him. But, if extraordinary, 
he was in a way balefully so. Secret passions and 
ironies might have their lair in his soul. He looked 
like a man who fed upon his own nervous forces in 
some unwholesome and furtive fashion. It did not 
surprise his host presently to se^ him toss away the 
half-smoked cigarette which he had of late accepted 
and produce an India-rubber pouch, full of an al- 
most coal-black tobacco. From this and a tiny 
bookful of paper squares he now deftly made him- 
self another cigarette, talking all the while and in- 
haling the smoke into his lungs with a gusto, avid 
though deliberate. 

“ I dropped into writing for the ‘ Ladies’ Lumi- 
nary ’ about four years ago. I had higher ambi- 
tions, then ; I’ve since lost them. Perhaps I could 
never have done anything really good, with art and 
patience in it, even if I’d had the chance. But the 
rot I turn out now gets harder and harder for me. 
Of course I’ve been hatefully out of sympathy 
with it from the first ; but I was glib when I 
began ; my blood flowed freely, so to speak, and 
my thunder bellowed with magnificent obedience. 
Now all that is changed. I have to search my 
brains for new and queer ways of committing 
crimes. It’s a horrid draught on a fellow’s nervous 
system. I often feel as if mine would some day go 
all to pieces.” 

“ Your fate zs a hard one,” said Guy, half jocosely. 


38 


A DAUGHTEU OF SILENCE. 


Allaire, who had drooped his eyes, looked quickly 
upward. “ I curse it, sometimes,” he said, iu 
dreary semitone. “ And you, now* ! ” he proceeded, 
wdth abrupt, sweeping scrutiny of Guy’s face and 
figure, “You’re ever so w^ell fixed as to money- 
matters, I suppose.” 

“ Is he going to ask me for ten dollars ? ” re- 
flected Guy. Aloud he said : “ Not so badly. I’ve 
enough.” 

“Ah, that magic word ‘enough’! — You’ve no 
pot to keep boiling like me. I only wish I had 
more substantial fuel for my fire than the trash I 
write.” 

“Miss Brenda Monk did not appear to think 
what you wrote was trash,” said Guy. “At least, 
she gave no suggestion that such was her belief.” 

Allaire started a little at the name spoken by his 
host. “ Brenda ? ” he soon said, with an odd note 
of inquiry in his voice. “ Oh, she’s hardly a 
judge.” 

“ But she seems educated.” 

“She is. Yet what I write would probably 
please her because we’re — friends.” 

“ And old friends, too ? ” 

“ M — yes. Did it strike you that we were well- 
acquainted ? ” 

“Somewhat.” And then Guy added, in tent- 
ative spirit : “ She spoke of her father. May I ask 
his occupation ? ” 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


39 


“ He was once a distinguished Washington phy- 
sician. Folly in the management of his fortune 
one day left him cruelly stranded. Some people 
say that it also made him insane. He drifted with 
his daughter and sister to New York; he had no 
wife — she had died years before. Always having 
been devotedly fond of chemistry and physics, he 
pursued studies in both. But all idea of mending 
his broken fortunes appeared to have deserted him. 
After living humbly for quite a good while in New 
York (during which time the wreck of his capital 
grew less and less) he drifted here, where he lives 
more humbly still.” 

Guy’s face expressed the keenest interest in this 
brief biography. “And Mr. Monk yet sticks to 
scientific studies ? ” he asked. 

“Yes. Heaven knows just what he does up 
in his laboratory on the third floor of that little 
house.” 

“ Whatever he does, I imagine,” said Guy, with 
an earnestness that did not escape his hearer, “is 
no material aid to the family income.” 

“None,” replied Allaire, decisively. “But — ” 
Right here he paused, and to the disappointment 
of Guy, rose, saying that he had had a very pleas- 
ant visit but that the imperative scribblings of 
“Joyce Jarvis” called him to his den in the next 
street. 

Guy already felt, with his native dislike of all 


40 


A DAUGUTIJB OF SILENCE. 


personal interrogations, that he had played far too 
extreme a part in the line of truth-seeker. He 
longed to know anything, everything, in respect 
to Brenda Monk’s past and present. He specially 
longed to know if any relations that touched upon 
sentiment might exist between Brenda and this 
dusky acquaintance of hers, with his fluent tongue 
and his dejected bearing. Chagrin filled him as 
Allaire took his departure. “ I have not learned 
half enough,” Guy roundly told himself after 
his visitor had gone. He sat once more in the 
chair which he had quitted during Allaire’s exit, 
and tried to probe the real depth of that en- 
chantment which had deepened within his soul 
since he had met and known Brenda. It was 
somehow an enchantment against which hidden 
funds of reason rebelled almost deridingly. At 
length he approached his desk and scanned a few 
loose sheets of his manuscript. Then he took up 
his pen and sought to frame a sentence that should 
be weighty with new authenticated tidings about 
the unhappy Montezuma. But the fervor of com- 
position was a nullity ; his nominative almost 
abjured his verb. He flung the pen aside and 
glanced at his watch. It was time he had already 
crossed the ferry. His mother, who had just re- 
turned from Newport and would depart to-morrow 
for Lenox, had made him promise that he would 
dine with her at seven that evening. 


A I>AUGIITi:ii OF SILENCE. 


41 


Soon afterward he began to perform changes in* 
his toilet that suited New York better than this 
suburban retreat in which it had been his pleasure 
to spend secluded literary hours. But meanwhile 
he kept subtly parleying with his own restless 
curiosity. There was a mystic element in the sud- 
den alteration of this Allaire’s deportment from 
rude to courteous that nimbly distanced all his 
conjectures. 

Allaire, as he walked homeward, hugging under 
one arm the two public-library books that were 
novels of the most lurid and healthless type from 
which he designed stealing a situation or an inci- 
dent and adroitly re-clothing it, mused upon the 
envy which had prompted him to get a closer view 
of Guy’s personality and surroundings. Envy was 
the sole cause of that courteous treatment which 
had succeeded his first sullen outburst in the park. 
And now this feeling had deepened, borrowing its 
dark tinges from the gloomy sources of a disposi- 
tion at war with half the world. 

Yes, he had been right. This Guy Arbuthnot 
was just the prosperous, dilettante young aristocrat 
whose birth and destiny he would have given five 
years of life to equal. Perhaps if the necessity of 
supplying the “Ladies’ Luminary” with a large 
fresh instalment of fiction before noon on the fol- 
lowing day had not thrust its menace at further 
social intercourse, he might have told Guy what a 


42 A DAUGItTER OF SILENCE. 

sport of accident his own present career stood for. 

He liked to dwell on this subject in talks with 
his Bohemian friends (and he had many of these, 
if ‘ friends ’ were not too rosy a term for them) 
among the New York haunts where he was known 
and welcomed. He showed none of Miss Gabriella 
Monk’s cult for the spurious in dealing with his 
hapless past. Its earlier years of luxury and ease 
were thorough fact. His father, long ago dead, 
had been a meteor that swept from splendor to ruin 
across the skies of finance. Overbearing, vulgar, 
disreputable “Bob” Allaire, as nearly all his fellow- 
gamesters in Wall Street called him, had been 
decent enough to educate his only child fairly well 
out of the millions that went slipping through his 
hands like packs of cards through a wizard’s. 
Young Ralph Allaire was about sixteen when dis- 
aster came. It drained the family coffers almost 
down to dimes, killed his father of paralysis in less 
than six months, and at last turned his downcast 
mother into a hopeless invalid. The next few 
years of Ralph’s life had been fraught with fright- 
ful struggle. Mrs. Allaire hated going to a hospi- 
tal, and with an almost sublime pluck her son had 
kept her out of one. Whatever faults and frailties 
may have marked him, he was filially close upon 
perfection. He often wondered, in this later stage 
of effort, how he had managed to keep at bay the 
snarl and leap of the wolf. It was easier, now; 


A BAVGHTJSB OF StLENCF, 43 

these three rooms in Hoboken cost no great sum, 
and his mother’s appetite was bird-like. At the 
same time, Ralph Allaire worried bitterly in secret 
about his monetary chances. He was now a favor- 
ite contributor to the “ Luminary,” but its editor, 
Mr. Spreckles, teemed with caprices, and was no- 
torious for setting up a Grand Vizier one day only 
to decapitate him the next. Lying in his grave, 
the paternal Allaire received many an acrid curse ; 
for if Ralph treasured one parent he execrated the 
memory of the other, and filled hours of sinister 
meditation with anathemas against the devil-may- 
care gambling that had left him portionless. 

Entering his rooms, he now went straight to his 
mother’s bedside. No one ever attended her but 
himself; there was no servant in this meagre little 
household of theirs. Mrs. Allaire was not so help- 
less but that she could now and then rise and either 
move about the apartment or else sit for an inter- 
val in a chair. But when she needed an attendant, 
her son always performed the office of one. The 
poor woman had grown so accustomed to his services 
when past rigor of poverty had made these all she 
could possibly obtain, that now she would have 
permitted no other hand than Ralph’s to assist her. 
Often he would come back from New York at a 
late hour, and sometimes in a befogged state 
through rash potations. He would then keenly 
reproach himself for his neglect, seeing that she 


44 


yl DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


had needed him, and that in her solitude she must 
have suffered more than her pale little mouth 
would confess. She was a thin, weak, puny crea- 
ture, with no more look of vitality in her than a 
slim weed at late autumn, but with one of those 
toughly tenacious constitutions that render death 
a prolonged and dreary siege against disease. 

This afternoon Allaire found her sleeping quietly 
in bed, and paused beside her for a few seconds, to 
make sure that the slumber was not feigned 
through any desire of sparing him trouble. Then 
he passed into his own room, which was a droll 
blending of the commonplace and grotesque. 

A plain cot-bedstead rose from one quarter ; a 
cheap washstand, with pitcher and basin, gleamed 
in another. Beside a window stood the most 
awkward and cumbrous of writing-desks, on which 
were strewn loose pages of manuscript in a heavy, 
glaring hand. Directly over this desk hung a 
gorgeous oriental paper lantern of huge size, and 
opposite to it, fastened in dense array against the 
dingy wall, were at least twenty masks, each of 
the sort which ordinary toy-shops will furnish. 

Punchinellos, Negroes, Chinese, Indians, Turks, 
Gypsies, and not a few other pasteboard present- 
ments of the varied human visage, all stared down 
at Allaire when he seated himself before his big, 
ungainly desk. By night he best loved to gaze 
up at this weird aud suggestive medallion, while 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


45 


the single gas-jet, with whose near aid he wrote, 
clad both lineaments and colors in fresh traits of 
strangeness. At times he won wild and savage 
fancies from the different yet blended visages, and 
they were a stimulus which might have evoked 
from his mind, under conditions of artistic leisure, 
results potent if repelling. 

But at present (provided the creative gift had 
ever really lurked in his brain tissues) he resem- 
bled a thwarted Poe, a ruined Baudelaire. All 
appeal that ever reached him, of marvellous, mystic 
or uncanny trend, was now travestied into the 
merest coarse sensationalism. His masks gave 
him no dreams that might have been woven into 
those more solemn or ghostly tapestries which 
drape the obscurer corrdors of literature. Such 
ideas as came he braided roughly into a very rag- 
carpet of tawdriness. And of late he had found 
even this task a difficult one, for the novelty of 
clustered faces had worn away, and he would often 
fix his eyes upon them for many minutes at a time 
in contemplation wholly barren and fruitless. 

But they were not his only stimulus. Besides 
the strong cigarettes that so often slipped their 
pungent smoke into his lungs, he had other means 
of stinging his jaded nerves into action. What he 
had told Guy regarding his distaste for alcoholic 
drink was a falsehood, yet he had more than once 
said the same thing to associates who only saw him 


46 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


toss off the milder beverage of beer. Other 
stronger potions he often took, yet for some reason 
always in solitude. Latterly a new vice had come 
to him, and that also he practised solely when sure 
that no eye observed his act. 

He had been despondent there in the park, and 
almost hopeless concerning his power to finish the 
large piece of work demanded of him on the mor- 
row. His visit to Guy had deepened this depres- 
sion, and he had brought away from it nothing ex- 
cept an added discontent at his abhorred worldly 
status. The doom of going on in just this ill-paid, 
precarious way could not be averted. There was 
nothing that he knew how to do, even passably 
well, except write, and that he had fallen into the 
rut of doing very badly. Oh, the weariness of 
such a future as his ! Before long his mother 
would die, and losing her would deal him a hard 
pang. Then his days would go on and on toward 
his own death — and how? Meanly, obscurely, 
pettily. He would be of no more importance in 
the world than a used postage-stamp. And a little 
money — say less than half the income that fellow 
Arbuthnot spent every year — would so lift and 
better him ! Money, — what a god it was ! How 
easily some men made it, and how others failed of 
getting it, though their strain of search were one 
long blood-sweat ! Sometimes he would shut his 
eyes and dream of a huge diamond sunk fathoms 


A J)AUGRTJS:R of silence. 


47 


down in the earth of Brazil or lower Africa. There 
it might be lying, worth a million dollars uncut, 
and here was he, having Mr. Spreckles to tell him 
gruffly that the last thirty-dollar installment of his 
story didn’t contain “ incident ” enough, though 
he had cayenne-peppered it with murder, abduc- 
tion and a poisoning. 

Never had. he felt less inclined to write than on 
this mellow and airy afternoon. But the require- 
ment was inflexible. He at length took a bottle 
containing some colorless fluid, and charged a tiny 
syringe with it. Then he bared his arm, which 
already showed a few scars wrought by past 
punctures, and thrust the point of the syringe an 
inch or two below the flesh. This was his new 
vice, though as yet not fully hatched, like a young 
snake half out of the shell. He had found these 
injections a superb spur to faltering energies, 
though his trials of them had thus far been few. . . 

It was several hours later, and night had not 
only fallen but thickened, when a small, frail, 
white-robed shape stole to the doorway of his room. 

It was his mother. She saw the gas flaring 
above her son’s head and bathing the masks on the 
wall opposite. But he himself sat drooped in his 
chair, with closed eyes and stertorous breathings. 
In a little while she glided nearer to the desk, and 
saw that it contained many sheets which seemed 
but lately written. 


48 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


“ Poor fellow,” she thought, “ how hard he 
works ! ” And then, for a moment, she stooped and 
held him in her arms, so fragile they made her 
embrace almost like that of a spirit. She knew 
nothing whatever about the morphine. It would 
have horrified her to know. 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 


49 


IV. 


Guy dressed himself with conscience-stricken 
haste and went across the river to his home in 
lower Fifth Avenue. It was a drowsy old red- 
brick house with white marble copings, in which 
two generations of Arbuthnots had lived and died 
before the reign of the present one. This was in- 
deed of limited number, for Mrs. Arbuthnot had 
long been a widow, and Guy had neither sister nor 
brother. A niece by marriage. Miss Agatha 
Gerard, was almost her adopted daughter, and, as 
Guy now appeared about ten minutes late in the 
dining-room, he discovered that she was also pres- 
ent at dinner. 

‘‘ What on earth are you doing in town ? ” he 
said to her, after he had kissed both ladies. “ I 
thought you were at Richfield Springs with the 
Colgates.” 

“ I am,” said Agatha. She was a slender girl, 
with sparkling black eyes, abundant hair that al- 
most seemed to burden her small stag-like head, 
and a pair of dimples that were the tiny and be- 
witching vassals of her smile. 


50 


A DAUGRTI^B OF SILENCE. 


“ Oh, then you’re the ghost of yourself ? ” said 
Guy, as he sat down opposite his mother. 

“ No, not that,” affirmed Agatha. “ Whatever 
questions you ask me on this subject, I must an- 
swer with the irritating obstinacy of Wordsworth’s 
little cottage-girl. She would say, ‘ Master, we are 
seven,’ and I will say that I’m still at Richfield 
Springs.” 

Mrs. Arbuthnot laughed her dulcet, high-bred 
laugh. “ She means, Guy,” said this lady, “ that 
she has been kind and sweet enough to tear herself 
away from the Colgates and dart down here, only 
for one night, to see me before I leave for Lenox.” 

“ Ah,” said Guy. He had just been served with 
his soup (the ladies had already finished theirs^ 
and he now suddenly fixed his eyes on his mother’s 
face while the spoonful was being lifted to his 
mouth and his arm remained crooked in conse- 
quence. Perhaps he felt some sort of magnetic 
attraction in his mother’s look. She was gazing 
at him quite steadily, and he seemed now to draw 
mute meanings from her eyes. They were blue, 
pellucid eyes, like his own, and they lit a faded 
face, yet one so delicate in its blond loveliness that 
as it swayed softly on its long, white throat, an 
exquisite patrician picture gleamed to you. 

“That’s precisely like our Agatha,” Guy now 
went on, yet not at all as if any subtle counsel in 
his mother’s gaze had prompted the encomium. 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 51 

“ She s always forgetting herself and doing sweet 
little acts like these to others whom she’s fond of.” 

Agatha somehow looked as if she did not quite 
like the ring of Guy s words. “ There was no 
self-sacrifice,” she said, “ in trying to catch a 
glimpse of Aunt Lucille. Indeed, it was just the 
reverse— a piece of gratified selfishness.” 

“ But its aim, since you call it so,” struck in 
Mrs. Arbuthnot, “ was a double one.” 

“How is that?” questioned Guy, with what 
touched his mother as a piece of irritating obtuse- 
ness. 

“ Agatha killed two birds with one stone,” she 
said, more lightly than she felt. “ The flying visit 
was paid to you, my son, just as much as to my- 
self.” 

Agatha’s face flushed a little. “ Oh, was it ? ” 
she exclaimed, with arch irony and a slight toss of 
her fairy head. 

“I shall be delighted to think so,” said Guy, 
looking at her across another spoonful of his con- 
sommS. 

“ If she refuses to admit it,” said his mother, 
“ the reason is obvious. Richfield isn’t a thousand 
miles from New York.” 

“ Nor Hoboken, either,” suggested Agatha, with 
her dimples roguishly deepening. 

“ Ah, poor Hoboken ! ” sighed Guy. “ Will you 
never let up on me about my retreat there ? 


52 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


“You don’t deserve to be let up on, as you call 
it,” declared his mother. 

“ And to-morrow,” retorted Guy, “ you’ll be tell- 
ing someone what pride you take in my unborn 
history. I’m not the first historian who’s retired 
from the world to escape its distractions while 
working. The great Gibbon went to the heights 
of Switzerland.” 

“ And you go to the heights of New Jersey,” said 
Agatha slyly. 

“I beg your pardon,” Gay contradicted, “but 
Hoboken is not on the Jersey heights.” 

“ My dear,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot to her niece, 
“ your ignorance is appalling.” 

“ It’s unfortunate for both of you,” said Guy, 
“ since I’m sure you’d love the big elm-trees and 
the view of the river and the peaceful little rows of 
cottages — all of which make a lovely ensemble.’’’* 

“You’ve omitted the beer-saloons,” ventured 
Agatha, with twinkling eyes. ^ 

“ I’m sure I saw no elm-trees there,” said Mrs. 
Arbuthnot, “when I last took a train from that 
region.” 

“ Oh,” said Guy, “ you went the wrong way.” 

“Undoubtedly I must have done so,” acceded 
his mother. “ What I principally saw was geese 
and goats and pools of green slime, with pigs 
wading in them.” 

“ I recollect starting in the cars from some such 


A DAtfGHTEn SILENCE. 53 

place as that,’* said Agatha, with droll seriousness, 
“ but I’d forgotten it was Hoboken.” 

“ There’s a seamy side to everything,” said Guy, 
shrugging his shoulders. 

“ That’s what you’ll say,” warned his mother, 
“ when you’re down with malaria.” 

“Has your new residence any name?” asked 
Agatha. “ Why don’t you call it Quinine Villa ? ” 

“ Oh, funniest of worlds ! ” cried Guy, in mock 
desperation. “ Walk but an inch from the beaten 
track and you’re derided ! Commit any hHise 
labelled popular and no one has the courage to 
blame it.” 

He preserved throughout dinner, however, his 
wonted good-nature. After all, he was no real 
recluse, and there was much in the way of water- 
ing-place gossip that did not miss diverting him. 
When dinner was through, it seemed natural 
enough to drop into a drawing-room sofa at 
Agatha’s side. His mother had glided away some- 
where, just as she had so often done before. Agatha 
always let him smoke, and there could be no ma- 
ternal objection to it just now, for the rooms were 
all clad in ghostly sheetings, their unchanged 
apparel of the recent summer. 

“ So you’ve really had a jolly time ? ” Guy said 
to her. 

“ I’m always rather contented, you know,” she 
answered. 


54 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 


“ Say you’re always in the merriest of spirits.” 

“ Somebody said that we’re compelled to laugh 
without being happy, lest we should die without 
having laughed. I don’t know how true that is ; 
but it seems to me I’ve often laughed from the 
purest happiness.” 

“ And from the healthiest philosophy,” said Guy, 
in his earnest, graceful way. “ There you are,” he 
went on, “ with your name that’s always reminded 
me of a nun’s, and yet ready to toss down your cup 
of sorrow, when it comes to you, as if it were a 
beaker of champagne.” 

“Upon my word, sir,” she replied, “your met- 
aphor might be a trifle less bacchanal ! I’ve never 
had any cups of sorrow yet to ‘toss down.’. . . 
You know how young I was when both my parents 
died,” she added, a little gravely. 

“ Oh, yes. But other griefs come to us. You’ll 
have yours. I hate to croak, but you can’t always 
be the sweetly gay girl that you are.” 

“ Nothing could ever make me mope or brood,” 
said Agatha, and she meant it, from the depths of 
her bright young soul. 

“How about a disappointment in love?” ques- 
tioned Guy. 

She shook her head. “Hope is a bird. If you’re 
afraid he’ll fly out of sight and never return, keep 
him caged.” 

“ Ah, you’re a very discreet young person ! Per- 


A DA UGH TEH OF SILENCE. 


55 


haps I’m wrong, and you’ll never have any griefs 
after all, worth mentioning; for you’ll never really 
be in love.” 

“ Dear, dear,” she smiled, “ what a seer of wis- 
dom solitude is making you ! ” 

“ It doesn’t take much skill to search an empty 
heart. There’s nothing to find.” 

“ And mine is empty ? ” she asked, lifting her 
glossy black brows and staring at him with the 
sparkle of mutiny in her eyes. 

“ I once thought it was not,” he returned, quite 
low of voice. 

“ And you think so now ? ” 

“ W ell, cousin Agatha — ” 

“ We’re not cousins,” she broke in, without ill- 
humor, yet rather more flippantly and petulantly 
than was her wont. 

He leaned a little closer to her. “Not cousins ! ” 
he said. “You and I ! Haven’t we called each 
other so for years ? ” He reached out his hand and 
took hers, to hold it in his own as he had done 
hundreds of times before, in his mother’s presence 
and out of it. But she drew the hand away, 
though he saw that she was smiling as she did so. 
Still, her smile (or was this but fancy ? ) had an 
uncharacteristic sharpness and hardness. 

“ You think my name like a nun’s,” she said. 
“ Why not change the ‘ cousin ’ for ‘ sister ’ ? Call 
me Sister Agatha.” 


56 ^ DAUGHTEB OF SILENCE. 

“ If you please. It’s very pretty.” 

Swayed by some sudden caprice, she gave him 
her hand again. But he fondled it only for a mo- 
ment, letting it fall after he had somewhat warmly 
pressed it. 

“ That won’t do,” he presently resumed. “We’re 
not brother and sister. There’s no bond of blood 
between us. It’s a bond of a different sort. You 
know that. . .” Then, after a little pause, during 
while she sat wholly quiet, he continued : “ You 
do know it’s true; don’t you, my dear Agatha?” 

“ I ? ” she said, blithely ironical. “ How should 
I know anything about such a bond? You forget.” 

“ Forget what ? ” 

“ How empty my heart is.” 

“ No, no,’' he broke out ardently. “ Forgive me. 
I didn’t mean it. I — I must have spoken so be- 
cause I was jealous.” 

“ Jealous of whom ? ” 

“ Never mind the names of the fellows. Five or 
six of them have been dancing attendance on you 
there at Richfield. You’ve as much as owned it.” 

She gave a new laugh that bore but faint trace 
of her native mirth, and spoke with tones that hid 
almost a sad ring below their softened key. 

“ You must have felt great concern about myself 
and my admirers when you couldn’t run up even 
for Saturday and Sunday. If you’d gone and 
watched how those ‘ fellows ’ conducted them- 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 57 

selves, it might have cooled the fierce fever of your 
jealousy. But you preferred your Hoboken elm- 
trees, which I seriously suspect, by the way, of 
being ailanthus. You never were good at botany; 
I recall how you hated it as a boy.’’ 

“Ah,” said Guy, “when you get back from 
Richfield for good and all you must come over and 
see my trees.” 

“ Shall I find you sitting under one of them, 
writing hard away at your history? Or perhaps 
you have a girl with a type-writer. Are there 
type-writing girls in Hoboken ? ” 

“ No ; that would be too civilized. I should de- 
test it.” 

“ You prefer girls with more primitive intelli- 
gence.” 

“ Oh, pshaw,” he exclaimed, “ I prefer girls with 
very little intelligence, for then they can’t use it 
to say sharp things.” 

“ Ah, come, now,” said Agatha, “such pessimism 
will never do in our great future historian. How 
would you manage if there had been no bright 
women in the world ? There wouldn’t have been 
any history for you to write.” 

“ Well, then, I’d have written novels; I’d have 
put you into one as my heroine.” 

“ Idealizing my faults, I hope ? ” 

“No, accentuating your virtues, if the public 


58 A DAUGHTJUB OF SILENCE, 

would stand such painting of the lily in this age of 
realism.” 

He spoke those words very tenderly, and it 
seemed to him as if they might at any moment be- 
come the prelude of an involuntary avowal. Three 
years ago he had told himself that he was in love 
with Agatha Gerard, the girl who had lived near 
to him like a sister in childhood, whom he had 
kissed and caressed as though she had been a sis- 
ter, and whom as a sister he had by turns applauded 
and rebuked. But now in later years the voice of 
sex had spoken with a totally new tongue. Early 
intimacy is in most cases hostile to love as haste is 
to art. But Guy and Agatha defied all prece- 
dents. Not that the world had ever guessed how 
much Mrs. Arbuthnot’s niece by marriage cared 
for that lady’s son. The mother of Guy had long 
ago guessed, however, and to-night, when he and 
she met in the drawing-room a good hour after 
dinner, she showed on her face an anxiety that 
was wholly born of this knowledge. 

Guy was now alone. He had sunk into an easy- 
chair beside a low lamp, and was turning over the 
leaves of a book which had for some reason escaped 
the general shrouding and locking up. 

“Where is Agatha?” asked his mother, as she 
dropped into another chair just opposite him. 

Guy looked up at her absently. “Agatha?” 
he repeated, as if the name were not (^uite uii' 


A DAtIGHTEE OF SILENCE. 59 

familiar. “I believe she went upstairs to write 
a letter.” 

Mrs. Arbuthnot sat for some time, covertly- 
watching him as he turned over the leaves of his 
book. 

“ I think that letter would have kept very well 
for a little while longer,” she said. 

“ Really ? She didn’t seem to think so.” 

“ Wasn’t that your fault, Guy ? ” 

He laid his book on the table. “ Good gracious, 
mother ! You don’t mean that I drove her up- 
stairs ! ” 

The lady disregarded this little outburst — per- 
haps because it struck her as in some sense an in- 
sincere feint. “My son,” she said, after another 
briefer pause, “ did you notice nothing in Agatha’s 
manner to-night ? ” 

Guy gave a quick negative shake of the head. 
“ Nothing. . . Oh,” he broke off, “ unless you mean 
that she was merry as a linnet. But then she’s al- 
ways that. I remember how she used to go to the 
dentist with a smile.” 

“ She can do more now,” said his mother. “ She 
can go to the surgeon with a smile.” 

“ The surgeon ? ” 

Mrs. Arbuthnot had long, white, beautiful hands, 
and she lifted one of them now, waving it toward 
her son in a way that seemed subtly to blend 
melancholy with playfulness. 


60 


A DAUGHTEB OF SILENCE. 


“ Is my figure of speech too stern a one, Guy ? ” 
she murmured. “But then remember” (and here 
she dropped her hand, with a disconsolate little 
fall, into her lap) “ how stern you can be, now and 
then, in your treatment of that joyous, buoyant 
nature ! ” 

Guy stared at the carpet, with his legs wide 
open, both hands clasped between them, and his 
head solemnly enough stooped for the attitude of 
a statesman helping to arbitrate on some matter of 
mighty national import. 

“ I don’t understand — I don’t understand,” he 
said. “ What is all this that you are saying, 
mother?” Suddenly he lifted his head and 
straightened himself in his chair, meeting his 
parent’s mild, vigilant eyes. 

“ I suppose I must have said it very badly, Guy, 
since it finds you so obtuse.” 

“ No ; not that, mother, but — ” 

“ Ah, don’t act as if you had never been unkind 
to Agatha ! You know that she did not come down 
from Richfield only to see me.” 

“ She’s enormously fond of you.” 

“ She loves you^'‘ said Mrs. Arbuthnot, with a 
distinct accent on each of the two last words. 

“ Loves me ? ” faltered Guy, looking at the 
carpet again. 

His mother pressed her delicate lips together, 
and showed that effect of pain which always be- 


A DAUGRTUR OF SILENCE. 


61 


trays itself on a countenance of excessively refined 
sensitiveness with such keen disclosure of pathos. 

“ She loves you,” said the lady, “ and I think 
you must know it — I think you must be certain of 
it. All last winter you were devoted to her. You 
went with her to countless places. Society gossipped 
about your engagement. It was never announced, 
but everybody waited for it to be proclaimed. She 
went with me to Newport and you promised her — 
you promised us both that you would come, too. 
But you never came.” 

“ I wrote you, mother, that — ” 

“ You wrote me the most affectionate letters, 
dear Guy.” 

“ How could they be other than affectionate let- 
ters from me to you, dear mother ? But I also told 
you—” 

“Ah, yes,” gently broke in his hearer. “You 
told me — you told us — that your history had 
gripped you with an iron hand — that you could not 
leave it — that you had rented those absurd rooms 
in that absurd Hoboken. All this was weeks ago. 
I wrote you in reply that there were boats and 
trains to Newport every Saturday, and boats and 
trains every Monday thence to New York. But 
no ; since you went with us to our cottage on Kay 
Street and left us there, you have never chosen to 
see the color of a New England sky.” 

Guy now nodded a sombre affirmative. “ All of 


62 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


which means,” he said, “that I’ve behaved like a 
wretchedly undutiful son.” 

“No,” softly protested his mother. “I know 
you’d have flown to me if I had needed you. I’m 
not blaming you in my own person. I want with 
all my heart that your history shall be a very 
grandeur of success. I’m willing to indulge your 
caprice about writing it where no shadow of inter- 
ruption shall fall upon your chosen retreat. But 
last summer, Guy, just after you had returned 
from Mexico, and were as full of enthusiasm about 
your work as you now are, you found time to 
spend a fortnight — no, three whole weeks — with 
Agatha and me at Bar Harbor.” 

“ Yes,” conceded Guy, with a voice that seemed 
as if it had been drilled into colorless undertone. 
“You’re quite right, I did do that last summer.” 

“ Last summer ! ” repeated his mother. “ Ah, 
then why not this? Have Cortes, Montezuma 
and the Aztecs laid such exhaustive siege to you ? ” 

“No — and yes,” he began. “I ” 

“ Agatha left me and went to Richfield,” pro- 
ceeded his mother, “ simply because you behaved 
as you did. No, Guy, you needn’t look at me in 
that contradictory way. It was solely because of 
your neglect.” 

Guy’s forehead gloomed at this. “You’re un- 
fair, mother,” he said, “ I never asked — ” and then 
he stopped dead short. 


A DA UGHTEB OF SILENCE. 


63 

“You never asked her to marry you,” slowly 
announced his hearer. “ I know that well enough, 
Guy. Not that she has ever told me. Not that she 
has ever spoken on this or any kindred subject. 
But I know. And yet you loved her ! Oh, my 
son, do you love her still?” Here the speaker’s 
voice broke and her lips trembled. She rose, with 
the disarrayed draperies drooping swiftly into 
their old happy lines about her figure, supple as a 
fern. 

“ Yes,” said Guy, in semitone, “ I love her still.” 

His mother went up to him and put a hand on 
each of his shoulders. “ My dear son ! Then 
why not — ” But suddenly she recoiled, letting 
her hands fall at her sides. She had seen some- 
thing strange in his look. She could not explain 
it, but it was there. 

“ Guy ! ” she exclaimed. That was all, and then 
the two stood fixedly facing one another. 

Guy presently took his mother’s hands in both 
his own. “I can’t explain it,” he faltered. “I 
— I have met someone else.” 

“ Ah ! ” breathed his mother, with a wholly 
novel and despairing wildness. “ The mystery is 
explained then ! She lives over there in that 
dreadful place.” 

Guy dropped her hands and half turned away. 
“ It’s not so dreadful a place, and she, I assure 
you, is far from dreadful. She’s very beautiful, 


64 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


in fact — a great deal more so than Agatha. She’s 
like a goddess.” 

“ Oh, Guy ! A goddess in Hoboken ! ” 

“ Nevermind ; she’s enchanting ; and she’s a lady, 
too. If I married her you would not be ashamed 
of her.” 

“ But you have just told me that you still love 
Agatha ! ” almost wailed Mrs. Arbuthnot. 

“ So I do.” 

“ And yet—” 

“ And yet I’m enchanted, entranced, by another 
woman.” 

“ Ah, Guy, Guy ! Are you making sport of 
me ? ” 

“ No ; but fate seems to be making sport of my- 
self. Listen, now, mother : A little while ago it 
was on the edges of my lips to — to settle every- 
thing with Agatha; but another face slipped 
between mine and hers like a warning phantom’s. 
I — I could not say the words ! ” 

“ The words Agatha expected ? ” 

» Yes.” 

“ The words Agatha had a right to expect ? ” 

“Yes — if you choose. And yet, ‘right’ is too 
strong a term. I — ” 

“ Oh, Gruy ! after these years ! ” 

He flung himself into the chair again and 
covered his face, while his mother, quivering and 
sorrowful, gazed down upon him. 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


65 


“ I can’t help it, I can’t help it ! ” he at length 
muttered, with look and voice all gloom. “ Brenda 
Monk has caught me by the heart-strings, mother. 

I believe that if I ever marry any woman on earth 
it will be she ! ’’ 

“ Brenda Monk,” repeated his mother, in a low, 
unsteady tone. The name had for her an instant 
repulsion. She had long ago set her heart on this 
marriage between Agatha and her son. ... Yet 
conflicting forces, piteous in their antagonism, 
speedily began to sway her spirit. It was a very 
lovely spirit, for it mingled qualities of the dainty 
aristocrat with others, larger, more human, and 
exquisitely proximate to the sweet wells and 
springs of richest maternal feeling. 

She stretched forth her hands again, and with - 
eyes blinded by tears, took several steps nearer to 
her son. But he did not seem to see her, for he 
had lowered his head in an attitude of profound 
dejection. 


66 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


V. 

The next time that Guy and Brenda met, there 
was no gypsy and adventurous atmosphere about 
their meeting. He called upon her, one afternoon, 
in the most conventional of ways, and sat beside 
her on one of the stiff hair-cloth sofas with as 
much decorum as if it had worn the cushioned 
satin of some social grandee. Mrs. Arbuthnot 
had gone back to Newport; Agatha had taken 
Ahe train for Richfield ; and Guy felt that both 
their departures were clad with a nimbus of dis- 
relish. Agatha, the most cheerful girl in the 
world, had bidden him good-bye with a valiant 
smile ; his mother, the sweetest disposition in the 
world, had made him her farewells while pierced 
with regret. 

But there was no help for it all. Guy had 
never considered himself in the slightest degree a 
voluptuary or sensualist, and yet he now awoke to 
the fact that he was in love with two women at 
once. If polygamy had been a possible achiev- 
ment this side of Mormondom he could have 
regarded a double state of matrimony with full 


A BA UGHTER OF SILENCE. 


67 

approval. The woman he loved seemed opposite in 
every detail, personal or mental; he felt almost as 
if he must love them with different valves of his 
heart, different nerves and lobes of the brain. But 
one had gained over him a swift ascendency that 
left the other in comparative background. What 
exasperated Guy with himself was the silent praise 
he ever poured upon Agatha and the inward dis- 
countenance with which he treated Brenda Monk. 

He sat beside the latter, this afternoon, and 
asked himself where was the real secret of that 
sorcery she exerted over him. Was it a physical 
kind purely? What else could it be except that, 
since her words were so few and of such meagre 
meaning? And yet the flush and palpitation 
which Guy experienced when he looked into her 
light-tinted eyes or watched the mingled beauty 
and composure of her profile, like that of some 
empress moulded on a coin, affected him as by a 
poetic remoteness from all carnal thrills. 

He had made up his mind that to live without 
Agatha Gerard might be an endurable lot, but that 
life without this fascinating, silent Brenda would 
be one long emphasis of pain. There was no 
reason, morover, why he should pass through any 
protracted term of courtship. His means were 
ample, and hers, as he had already learned, were 
the reverse. Marriage, for this latter reason, might, 
perhaps, not seem so alluring to her as to most girls, 


68 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


when looked at through the vista of a long en* 
gagement. And then he had quickly become certain 
enough that she possessed none of the coquettish 
arts which diversify a long engagement and reflect 
themselves upon its surface as the coy heads of 
cresses are mirrored from the margin of a stream. 
There was no more flirtation in Brenda Monk, Guy 
told himself, than in one of the ferry boats that 
bore him across the river each morning. He found 
himself incapable of paying her any compliments, 
except antique and stately ones ; her personality 
appeared to demand that he should deal in these 
or none. But these he detested ; they always 
made him think of Disraeli’s novels, where the 
ducal young heroes lean across spinets at which 
Lady Sophia or Lady Adelaide sits warbling a bal- 
lad and begin an offer of their hands, hearts, and 
castles with the words, “ Adored being, etc.” 
Brenda was certainl}" an adored being to Guy, but 
he wanted to let lier know it in slightly more nine- 
teenth-century phrase. 

After about a half hour had been passed in her 
society he realized that lie had done almost all the 
talking. At the same time he became aware that 
her silences were growing a sort of divinely subtle 
speech to him. She was a girl, as might be said, 
of manifold silences. She had one that seemed to 
mean self-absorption, another that implied the 
most attentive listening, another that appealed to 


A DAUGBmB OF SILENCE. 69 

him as a keen potential interest in the mere watch- 
ing of how his own features played and altered 
while he adressed her, and still another that affected 
him as the reserve born of weightsome memories 
— perhaps, also, of existent cares and worriments. 
But in each aspect, whether imaginary or real, she 
equally charmed him. Her spell had no vibrations 
of degree. It was a magic clock that ever bore 
the same musical tick to his enchanted ear. 

“ I’ve the fancy,” he at length said to her, “ that 
you are not always in the best of spirits. If this 
be true, and if I could prove of any service to 
you, I should feel honored by your request to 
perform that service.” Then, after a moment of 
hesitation, he continued, with new emotion in 
face and voice : “No matter what you asked me 
to do for you, I should take the deepest pleasure 
in doing it.” 

“ Oh, thanks,” she replied. 

He waited for her to say more. “ There is 
nothing I can do?” he then questioned. 

“No. How could there be ? ” 

“ Ah,” he broke out, gently, but with a plain 
betrayal of feeling, “you are rebuking me now, I 
suspect, for having shown too great a boldness.” 

“ Boldness ? ” she repeated ; “ you haven’t been 
bold.” 

“ I was very bold two days ago, in the park.” 

“ Did you think so ? ” 


70 ^ BAUGHTm OF SILENCE. 

“ Did not you think so ? Honor bright, now ! ” 

She slowly shook her head. “We had known 
each other so well by sight for a good while before 
that.” 

“ True — true. It is so pleasant for me to hear 
you say it ! . . And what was your opinion of me 
all that time ? Did you give me the least serious 
thought, or ?” 

But just then Miss Gabriella entered the little 
parlor. Brenda’s aunt had burned to see the new 
admirer of her niece. In Guy she had scented a 
possible deliverer from the thraldom and jeopardy 
which engirt herself and kindred. Money was 
horribly short in the Monk household ; every day 
saw dollars drifting out and not even half a dollar 
drifting in. This young man might have arrived 
in the nick of time, with the purse of Fortunatus 
at his girdle. Brenda was just the girl to set some 
men mad with her beauty. Thus far she had never 
been civil to a male soul except Ralph Allaire, 
whom Miss Gabriella thought eerie and uncanny, 
apart from his impracticable poverty. 

She had hatched a quick little plot upstairs with 
Brenda after Guy’s card had been received. She 
was to appear in a half hour or so, and her niece 
was to plead the necessity of a short absence, thus 
leaving her alone with Guy for at least a good 
twenty minutes. 

Brenda proved quite tractable, and now carried 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, fi 

out her part in the scheme. She did so with that 
indifferent quietude which so often mantled her 
actions. When Brenda had glided from the room 
he looked in courteous despair at the new figure 
which had presented itself. 

It struck him as the figure of a stout and rather 
tiresome elderly woman. He saw that she had evi- 
dently ornamented herself for the occasion, and 
her shabby silk and wrinkled ribbons touched his 
sense of pathos while he noted them. 

“I’ve been scolding Brenda for not acting very 
severely with you when you joined her in the park, 
the other day, Mr. Arbuthnot,” his would-be enter- 
tainer began. Here she smiled, and lifted her 
plump finger, shaking it at Guy. “But my niece 
defended herself by sajdng many nice things about 
your gentlemanlike manner and also about your 
being a near neighbor of ours. Of course the 
mischief is now done, however, and spilled milk 
shouldn’t be cried over.” 

Guy, bored to death, answered with a random 
pleasantry. “ There’s been no milk spilled that I 
know of. Miss Monk,” he said, “ except the milk 
of human kindness. That was the act of your 
niece, and one for which I feel no end of grati- 
tude.” 

Miss Gabriella threw back her head (whose 
tresses she had lately arranged into bandeaux and 
puffs that were of a fashion at least ten years old) 


72 


A DAl/GJiTJSli OF SILENCE. 


and laughed with great heartiness. “ Oh, how 
good ! ” she presently exclaimed. “ Such witty 
repartee as that reminds me so keenly of my earlier 
Washington life ! For you must know, Mr. Ar- 
buthnot,” she went on, with a sudden change to 
her beloved retrospective self-commiseration, “that 
I have seen, in my day, the best — the very best — • 
society which Washington affords.” 

Guy shifted his position and wondered if Brenda 
would keep her word about returning “in a few 
minutes.” At the same time this aunt of hers had 
pricked his curiosity from its threatened torpor. 
She was a person of unexpected culture, although 
the nameless bienseance of Brenda might logically 
have prepared him for such a kinswoman. The 
caricaturish touches in her were tainted by snob- 
bery, if you chose, but they were not of a sort one 
might be expected to find under this modest little 
Hoboken roof. For Guy knew his generation ex- 
haustively enough to have marked what gulfs of 
difference may lie between the pretensions of the 
uneducated and those that spring from folly co- 
existent with refinement. 

“Oh, yes,” Miss Gabriella soon resumed, “I 
can’t help telling you that this horrid little town 
is a real vale of tears for me — regretful, memorial 
tears, Mr. Arbutlmot, if I only let myself weep 
them. But I don’t weep them. I bear up. I bear 
up for Brenda’s sake, for my brother’s sake. Still, 


A DAUGHTIJE OF SILENCE. 


73 


recollection will have sway. What are those beau- 
tiful lines of the poet? Byron’s, are they not? or 
Rogers’s? You will know, for Brenda tells me 
you are such a great scholar — 

‘ Sweet memory, wafted by the gentle gale, 

Oft up the stream of time I turn my sail, 

To view the fairy haunts of long-lost hours. 

Blest with far greener shades, far lovelier flowers I’ 

Ah, how delightfully my old Washington friend. 
Chief Justice Abernethy, used to quote those 
inspired words ! He was — I don’t mind telling 
you., Mr. Arbuthnot, for it’s all so long ago — he 
was one of my suitors. He had a great fortune, 
but a still greater heart. I refused him because of 
some silly, girlish fancy.” 

And then Guy was told more about the faded 
splendors of that epoch when Miss Gabriella 
reigned a petted Washington belle. But she had 
no intent, to-day, of laying bare the full pic- 
turesqueness of her egotism. She wanted, for once, 
and for a wonder, to deal with other topics. “Your 
mother is the Mrs. Arbuthnot, isn't she,” presently 
came her question to Guy, “ who has rented a cot- 
tage at Newport this summer?” 

“Yes.” 

“ And — a — excuse me, but was not she, before 
her marriage, a Miss Alexander? ” 

“ Yes.” 


74 A DAUGIITJi:n OF SILENCF. 

“ I thought so ! ” beamed Guy’s companion. “ Of 
course, yes! Her father was Mr. Alexander, the 
very prominent Washington banker. I knew him 
quite intimately.” (Guy here had a funny feeling 
that she might be going to say his grandfather had 
once offered himself to her, which would have 
proved an awkward disclosure, as that gentleman 
had left a widow on whom he had been supposed 
to dote for nearly half a century.) “ And you are 
his grandson ! Actually his grandson ! ” 

“Perhaps, then, you knew my mother also,” 
.ventured Guy. 

“ I — I think she had married and moved to New 
York — a — before my time,” was the reply, and de- 
livered with a faint, unhabitual stammer. 

“ Ah, quite so,” murmured Guy. His mother 
had spent many months each year in Washington, 
for a number of years after her marriage. It oc- 
curred to Guy that this aunt of Brenda’s was 
rather densely coated over with humbug. At the 
same time it was ladylike humbug — stucco, so to 
speak, of a superior wear and adhesiveness — and 
he thanked his destiny for that. 

Meanwhile Miss Gabriella was telling herself 
that he must have a million dollars in his own 
right if he had one (an estimate which was not at 
all far from being correct), and that the hour of 
blessed emancipation was at hand. For it never 
seemed possible to her that so genial-looking a 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 75 

young gentleman as Guy would not be willing to 
marry herself as well as Brenda, while in respect 
to his also marrying a certain pale little man up- 
stairs, with wild eyes and sunken cheeks, her 
views on this subject were perhaps not clearly 
formed. 

Very soon she gave the conversation a turn 
which made Brenda the subject of it, and thence- 
forth Guy’s ennui vanished. “ You don’t find my 
niece at all talkative, do you, Mr. Arbuthnot?” 
she asked. 

“ I find her extremely quiet,” said Guy, hesitant 
of speech through the very gladness it gave him to 
speak of Brenda. 

“All that changes when she knows people 
better.” 

“Does it?” said Guy, most eagerly; “ are you 
quite sure ? ” 

“ Well,” said Miss Gabriella, possibly fearing 
that misrepresentation had now shown an impolitic 
boldness, “ I — I should say that Brenda improves 
in that way after you know her better. Yes, she 
improves.^^ 

“ I don’t want her to improve in any way,” said 
Guy impetuously ; and then he stopped and 
blushed. 

“ Oh, you want her, then, just as she is,” came 
the pointed yet jocular rejoinder. 

Guy seemed to meditate for a moment, with 


76 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

lowered gaze. Then he lifted his eyes and said : 
“Wanting her and getting her are probably two 
Very different affairs.” 

Miss Gabriella’s heart bounded with hope. 
“Yes,” she said, trying to speak calmer. “But 
girls will be girls, you know ; and then, Mr. 
Arbuthnot, ‘ faint heart,’ as you also know. . . I 
need not finish the quotation.” 

There was now a silence, during which Miss 
Gabriella could almost hear her own pulses vi- 
brate. 

“ I’m not faint-hearted,” at length said Guy. 
“ But if her heart is given to somebody else, that 
is another matter. I should like to know it before- 
hand; I should like to be on my guard against it.” 

“ Oh, but it’s not true ! She hardly sees a man 
who’s her equal, over here ; and, except that Ralph 
Allaire ” 

“ I’ve met him,” shot in Guy. “ Tell me, do you 
think she cares for him the least in the world ? ” 

“ Oh, not the least ! ” exclaimed Miss Gabri- 
ella. “ Dear me ! Brenda would look higher than 
that ! Not that she’s ambitious. . A lovelier, 
gentler, more yielding nature I’ve never met. I’ve 
often said of Brenda that she would make an ideal 
wife ! ” 

“Aunts mistaken there,” came a voice from the 
doorway, and Brenda moved across the threshold. 

Guy rose as she approached. “ I can’t believe 


A daughti:b of silence. 77 

it ! ” he said ; “ I can’t look into your face and 
believe it ! ” 

Shortly after this he took his leave. No sooner 
had the , outside door closed behind him than Miss 
Gabriella turned, almost violently, upon her niece. 

“How can you treat him as you do? He’s 
charming ; he’s a gentleman ; I’ve never seen any 
one here in Hoboken that could hold a candle to 
him ! And, besides that, he’s enormously rich.” 

Brenda was standing in the centre of the little 
homespun carpet, with hands folded and eyes that 
seemed to have drawn their contemplation inward 
upon her own spirit. 

“ How do you know,” she asked, with the faint- 
est of starts, “that he’s enormously rich?” 

“ I do know — I’m sure of it,” replied her aunt. 
And then she gave her reasons, while Brenda stood, 
just as before, with folded hands and dreamful 
eyes, not seeming to listen, and yet wearing a look 
that might have meant rigid attention. “It all 
depends,” Miss Gabriella soon proceeded, “ upon 
your treating him properly.” 

“ Properly ? ” repeated the girl. 

“ Yes ; you must understand me. There’s no 
doubt he wants to make you his wife.” 

A soft shudder, visible and no more, passed 
through Brenda’s frame. She turned her eyes 
upon her aunt. “You want me to say ‘yes’ if 
he does ? ” 


78 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

“ Want you, Brenda ! why, you would be crazy 
to refuse him ! ” 

“ But — if I — didn’t — love him ? ” 

“ You’d very soon learn to love him ! ” cried her 
aunt, slipping nearer and catching her by one of 
her large, smooth wrists. “ And even if you 
hadn’t any romantic feeling (for I sometimes think 
it isn’t in you to have that about anything or any- 
body ! ) you should find joy in bringing us — ^your 
father and me — an immense help and comfort. 
You’d raise the family; you’d put us on our feet 
again ; you’d take away from us this awful cloud 
that grows bigger and darker every day ! ” 

Brenda slowly shook her head, while Miss 
Gabriella tightly held her wrist. 

“ Oh, but if I didn’t love him — if I didn’t love 
him ! ” she appeared to muse aloud. 

Her aunt recoiled with an exasperated little 
scream. “It would be horribly selfish of you to 
refuse him ! ” she exclaimed. “ There’s no one 
else you care for! There can’t be ! ” 

“Can’t there?” she replied, with a vague, 
transient smile. 

“ Oh, very well I ” fretted her aunt. “ Then, if 
there is, pray mention who there is. If you should 
tell me you cared for that dingy, common young 
Allaire, I shouldn’t believe you were speaking the 
truth ! No, I positively shouldn’t ! ” 

Brenda bit her lips for a second or two, and creased 


A DAUGRmB OF SILENCE. 


79 


her brow, as if both anger and disdain were at the 
root of this facial change. Immediately afterwards 
she stared straight at her aunt, and said, in a pecul- 
iar, measured undertone : 

“ I haven’t told you that I would refuse him if he 
asked me to marry him. If I did so I don’t sup- 
pose I’d be the first woman in the world who sacri- 
ficed herself like this.” 

Ending what was a speech of most uncharac- 
teristic length, she passed toward the same door 
by which Guy had lately made his exit. 

Her aunt took several agitated steps in her 
direction. “ Good Heavens ! ” cried Miss Gabri- 
ella. “As if it would be a sacrifice for you to 
marry a man almost any other girl would give a 
finger to get ! ” 

Brenda had paused at the threshold of the little 
parlor. “ I’m not ‘ almost any other girl,’ as you 
put it,” she said. “ I’m myself.” And at once 
she disappeared. 

Miss Gabriella sank, fi ightened and miserable, 
into a chair. She had always held that there was 
something weird and mystic about her niece. . . 
An hour or two later she sat in her usual place at 
the dinner-table, with hardly appetite enough to 
taste a morsel of the frugal fare it furnished. Her 
brother, as often before, did not choose to. appear. 
Brenda had gone out and had not yet returned. 
It grew to be past six o’clock, and the shortening 


80 A BAUGRTUR OF SILENCE. 

afternoon of early autumn had considerably dark- 
ened when she came face to face with some one in 
the outer hall. 

“ Ah,” she said, “ so you’re back at last ! It’s 
long past dinner-time, as you must know. Your 
father. . .” But here she paused. Brenda’s face 
gleamed ghastly to her in the bluish twilight ; she 
had never before seen it so pale. As often happens 
in like cases, she veiled her alarm under a common- 
place. 

“ Are you not going to have any dinner ? ” she 
asked. 

Brenda swept by her, into the little parlor, 
“Dinner ! ” she muttered ; “ I wish I was dead ! ” 

Miss Gabriella followed her. “ Brenda,” she 
appealed, “ what is it? What has happened? 
Tell me.” 

Brenda veered round and stood facing her aunt. 

“ Nothing. . . nothing,” she said, as if afraid of 
having already revealed too much. Then, from 
white, her fair young face seemed to turn grayish, 
as though it were petrifying, and in another mo- 
ment she reeled, fell, and swooned dead away at 
her aunt’s feet. 


A LAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


81 


VI. 

Not long afterward, while Ralph Allaire sat be- 
fore his desk, in twilight so vague tliat only a visage 
here and there looked dimly down on him from the 
shadowed group of masks, he was roused by an un- 
expected summons. The little maid-of-all-work at 
the Monks’ had come to tell him that Miss Brenda 
had suddenly been taken quite ill, and to ask him 
if he would please drop over there at once. 

Allaire stood for a slight space as if musing on the 
message. Then he sharply queried ; “ Who sent 
you to say this ? ” 

“ Miss Gabriella, sir.” 

“Very well. I’ll be there soon.” 

He found Miss Gabriella in tearful tremors. 
She told him of Brenda’s swoon and of her fears 
lest the fall which went with it had gravely in- 
jured the girl’s head. “ She lies perfectly still,” 
said Allaire’s informant, “and it looks as if she 
couldn’t speak even if she would. I sent for you, 
because there didn’t seem to be anybody else in 
this forlorn place that I could send for.” 

6 


82 


A BA UGH TUB OF SILENCE, 


Doubtless Miss Gabriella’s worriinent prevented 
her from realizing just how deeply uncivil was her 
last sentence. Allaire merely nodded, however. 
He was accustomed to being treated by this lady as 
though he were a grade or two above a street-sweep. 
Often he had told himself that some day he would 
set his wrath upon her like an uncollared blood- 
hound. But as yet he had not found such meas- 
ures of retaliation worth the trouble they involved. 

“ If you think Miss Brenda’s so ill,” he now said, 
“ I don’t see why you haven’t called in a doctor.” 

Miss Gabriella sighed heavily. “ There’s no use 
denying that every dollar counts with us just now. 
If you think Brenda can pull through without a 
doctor I shall be very glad to hear it. You know 
her pretty well. Suppose you come upstairs with 
me into her room, and — ” 

“ No, thank you,” broke in Allaire; “I’d rather 
not.” 

He spoke so coldly and austerely that his lis- 
tener shot toward him a suspicious glance. “ Per- 
haps,” she said, “ you can tell what happened to 
put Brenda in the wretched mood I found her when 
she came home this evening.” 

Allaire made no answer. 

“ She seemed in a desperate state of misery,” 
pursued Miss Gabriella. “ It’s all so mysterious ! 
I do hope that if you know anything about it — if 
you’ve any beliefs or conjectures on the subject, 
even — ^you’ll be entirely frank.” 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 83 

“ I don’t know anything — how should I ? ” re- 
turned Allaire, curt and almost sullen. “ If you 
don’t want to have an outside doctor, why not con- 
sult her father ? He used to be a regular practis- 
ing physician, and a famous one at that.” 

“ He has seen her, and prescribed for her. 
But — well, I haven’t even sent out for the medi- 
cine he ordered.” 

“ Why not?” 

“ Oh, because I haven’t the least faith in his 
sanity. There’s the truth, if you care to know it.” 

Allaire framed a few questions concerning Bren- 
da’s condition, and at length said that he would go 
upstairs and ask her father his real opinion. “ I 
think you’re thoroughly wrong,” he pursued, begin- 
ning to ascend the narrow staircase, “ in your dis- 
trust of Mr. Monk’s reasoning powers. He may 
be eccentric, but his mind is not unseated.” 

Their speaker doubted the truth of these words, 
even while he uttered them. He had never really 
decided just what was Theodore Monk’s actual 
mental state. There were times when the man 
seemed sane as the paying-teller of a bank. There 
were other times when his flightiness had in it the 
true savor of Bedlam. 

This evening Allaire found him engaged, below 
the light of a single rather dim gas-flame, in twist- 
ing or re-twisting certain electrical wires. 

“ I beg your pardon for intruding upon you,” 
the young man commenced. 


84 


A J)AUGRTI:B of silence. 


“ Oh, it’s no intrusion at all,” said Monk, who 
had always treated Allaire with not a little distinct 
civility. 

“ Thank you,” answered his visitor, and dropped 
into a seat. 

The place was familiar to him. His mind leaned 
toward the marvellous, educated though it was in 
certain details and yet lacking that due acceptance 
of the rational which is a quality of the best-trained 
intellects our time possesses. His imagination, 
constantly spurred and strained, had acquired a 
fondness for investing this lone hermit with thau- 
maturgic traits. There were times when he was 
ready to declare Brenda’s father the possessor of 
potent mystical lore. Again, he would grow a 
skeptic on this point, and pronounce the old man 
an idle and futile dreamer. But since his vicious 
habit had begun to work its erosive effects, Allaire 
had become, at least partially, the slave of queer 
dreams and goblin visions. Never an orderly or 
precise thinker, jarred nerves and abnormal sensa- 
tions had now laid upon him their unwholesome 
spell. 

“ I wanted to ask you about Miss Brenda,” he 
proceeded, after a brief stare about the odd, topsy- 
turvy chamber. “ Her aunt thinks that she’s de- 
cidedly ill. Do you ? ” 

“ No ; not at all,” was the brusque, off-hand 
reply, “ She fainted away, and hurt her head a 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


85 


little when she fell. She isn’t the hysterical tem- 
perament at all ; but there are periods in the life 
of all young women when seizures like these are 
no more serious than a headache. Perhaps Brenda 
had over-exerted herself a little. I’ve seen such 
cases in my long practice at least five hundred 
times.” 

“ And her head? You don’t think she has dan- 
gerously hurt it ? ” 

“ By no means. There’s a slight contusion near 
the left temple. It’s a mere surface lesion, though. 
She’ll be as vigorous as ever in a few more hours.” 

“ I’m glad to hear you say so,” answered Allaire, 
yet he did not speak the words as though he were 
specially glad. “And your own health, doctor,” 
he went on, after a slight pause ; “ is that better or 
worse than usual ? ” 

“ Worse,” came the short response. 

“Worse?” 

“ Yes. I’m tough as iron; I may live for an age 
yet ; my father died at seventy-eight. I’m sound 
enough organically ; but my nervous force fails 
me. Every new month makes me surer of that.” 

“ Perhaps you work too hard.” 

Monk started. “ Work ? ” he said. “ Yes, yes ; 
you’re right. I do work a good deal.” His ob- 
server now noted how wild a look had got into his 
eyes. But Allaire knew the look of old ; he had 
seen it many times in their former talks. 


S6 -4 LAUGHTER OF SILEFCE. 

“Then why not take a rest?” he said. “You 
once told me that you would take one before 
long.” 

“ I shall, I shall, rather soon,” was the response. 
A smile here flashed over the haggard face. He 
stared searchingly at his guest, for a moment. 
“ Do you know, Allaire,” he continued, in a voice 
pitched not much above a whisper, “ that I some- 
times long for a — a person who can keep a secret? ” 

Allaire felt his pulses quicken, he could not have 
told why. The next instant he rose and went 
toward a chair that almost touched his companion’s 
elbow. He quietly seated himself in this chair 
while saying : 

“ I can keep a secret. I’m an excellent fellow 
at that sort of business.” 

“Are you?” retorted Monk, with another scru- 
tinizing glance. He now stretched forth his hand, 
which Allaire at once took. “ But will you give 
me your solemn word of honor you’ll not breathe 
my secret to a living soul ? ” 

“Yes, Dr. Monk. I faithfully promise that I 
will not.” 

The recognition of these words took the form of 
a hand-pressure which almost pained its recipient. 
Then Monk folded his arms, bowed his head, and 
remained for quite a while in profound apparent 
reverie. Suddenly he lifted his head and spoke in 
low, peculiarly vibrant tones. 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


87 


“ What do you think,” he asked, “ that I’ve been 
plodding over for such a devilish long time up 
here in this den of mine ? ” 

“ I have no idea,” replied Allaire, with instant 
frankness. 

“Ah — I see — you’ve no idea. Kobody else has, 
either, 1 suppose. That sister of mine, Gabriella, 
believes me crack-witted. I’m not sure that my 
girl, Brenda, isn’t of the same belief. No doubt 
you are, as well.” 

“ There you wrong me,” said Allaire. “ I 
thought you might be bent on some discovery — ” 

“ Discovery ! ” came the sharp interruption. 
“ Did you think that ? ” He clapped Allaire on 
the shoulder, with a grotesque air of condescen- 
sion. “ Well, my boy, you were right. I was bent 
on a discovery. But it was one I’d succeeded in 
reaching. Ever since you^ve known me I’ve been 
perfecting it, not striving to attain it.” 

“ Indeed, Dr. Monk ? And is it very valuable? ” 

Monk flung back his head and gave a soundless 
laugh that did not strike his watcher as if it ema- 
nated from a being of unflawed faculties. 

“Valuable! It’s pricelessly so. I’ve wrung 
something from science that makes me at this mo- 
ment a millionaire thrice over. Can you guess 
what I’ve found out the means of doing? No? 
Then I’ll tell you I ” 

He did tell, in a few more hurried and earnest 


88 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


sentences. As he ended, Allaire’s black eyes were 
widening and glittering with amazement. 

“You — you don’t mean it!” he stammered. 
“ No — no, Dr. Monk ; you can't mean it ! ” 

“ Don’t I ? Can’t I ? ” chuckled his informant, 
rubbing both hands together for a short while as if 
in childish glee. Then his face grew much graver, 
and he reached forth one hand, holding Allaire by 
the lapel of his coat while these next few sentences 
fell from him : 

“ I’ve always felt I could do it some day. The 
real secret, you see, is in the hind of electricity I 
use and the mode of its application. Anybody can 
flash electricity through carbon and get certain 
results. But to blend those two agencies in just 
the right proportion — to commingle them as earth 
commingles them when she creates her least or 
largest diamond — ah, that is different indeed I ” 

“ And — you have — made — diamonds ? ” mur- 
mured Allaire, with that form of excitement which 
reveals itself in slow speech and dazed mentality. 
“ You — you have actually brought forth real dia- 
monds, of — of noteworthy size, here in this very 
room? ” 

“I’ve made some as large as hazel-nuts,” re- 
turned Monk. 

“ My God I ” faltered Allaire, under his breath. 

Monk rose, at this point, and went to a square 
chest of oak with heavy brass mountings. The 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


89 


chest he unlocked with a small key which he took 
from some inner pocket, and at length brought 
forward a rather large chamois bag that seemed at 
least half filled with contents of some loose, irreg- 
ular sort, like fragments of stone or glass. He 
held the bag tightly closed with one hand while he 
set it on Allaire’s knee. 

‘‘And those are — are diamonds of your own 
making ? ” said his visitor, in a wonder-stricken 
voice. 

“Yes — yes. Feel from the outside how large 
some of them are.” 

Allaire did so. At the same moment he said : 
“ Theodore Monk, why wear yourself out with 
further work when you’ve got all these ? They’re 
enough to give you all you can possibly want in 
this life, and — and to leave your daughter very 
rich as well.” 

“ I shall stop soon, I shall stop soon,” was the 
answer. 

“ You certainly should — or you’ll never find the 
means of enjoying them. . . . But are you sure 
they’re truly diamonds ? ” 

“ Sure ? ” echoed Monk contemptuously. “ Am 
I sure of my own name ? ” 

“ Let me see a few of them,” said Allaire. And 
with his fingers writhing as if from greed, he put 
forth both hands, to clutch the bag and open it. 

A keen cry leapt from Monk. He sprang back- 


00 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


ward, with eyes that swelled from their sockets. 
At great speed he darted to the chest again, re- 
placed the bag inside of it, tremulously re-locked 
it, and then turned toward his visitor, while a sneer 
of ire played around his lips. 

“I’m sorry,” he gasped, in high excitement — 
“I’m sorry I ever let you know, after all. I’ve 
been a fool to tell you ! Now I’ll have no peace, 
no peace, till they’re out of the house and safely 
sold.” 

Allaire had grown pale and was gnawing his 
lips. “ Do you think I will steal them ? ” he 
asked. 

“ Oh, it’s not so much that,” Monk began to 
moan, “ as it’s the folly of my having told you ! 
How can you go through your days with the bur- 
den of such a secret incessantly weighing on you ? 
Why was I idiot enough to saddle you with it? 
What a silly impulse I yielded to ! Can I ever 
forgive myself ? ” 

And here the man flung himself on that same 
frayed lounge where his daughter had found him 
lying racked by headache only a day or two ago. 

“ He is mad,” thought Allaire. Aloud he said, 
“ Mr. Monk, I have given you my word that I 
will never repeat what you have told me. You 
may rely upon my keeping it.” 

After that he went downstairs through the 
quiet little house. 


A 2)Al/GHT£:ii OF SILENCF. 


01 


“ Oh, beyond a doubt,” now ran his reflections, 
“ the man is crazy as a hatter. He’s no more got 
a bagful of diamonds than I have ! ” 

To which an inward voice responded: “Are 
you quite so certain of that, after all ? Science is 
to-day the mother of miracles, and her great sur- 
prises grow legion.” 

Allaire drew his lips close together, as if to keep 
a self-derisive smile from breaking through. Per- 
haps he decided that this last doubt was born not 
so much from intellect as from nerves— -those poor 
human nerves of his which he had been treating of 
late as if they were iron wires instead of ethereal 
filaments. 


92 


A JJAl/GJIT^Ii OF SILENCE, 


VII. 

Beenda’s father had been right. She rose the 
next day as if nothing had happened, and told her 
aunt that she felt quite well and strong. But Miss 
Gabriella noticed on her face a sadness that she 
had never before seen there. 

“ Brenda,” she said, with much sweetness (and 
Miss Gabriella could disclose sweetness and sin- 
cerity to a marked degree when not airing her 
foibles), “ I do wish you would tell me what it was 
that made you act so queerly yesterday ; you must 
have had something strange happen to you, or 
seen somebody, or. . . Oh, Brenda, you’re always 
such a statue I And yet I know you’ve lots of 
nature hidden under all that quiet of yours. I 
know it, because I’ve watched you since you were 
a little girl, and loved you very, very much all 
the time I did watch you. I’ve seen you show 
feeling — great and deep feeling, too — again and 
again. Perhaps you fancied I didn’t detect the 
signs, but they were clear to me, Brenda — they 
were clear, because I loved you.” 

Here Miss Gabriella put both arms about her 
niece’s neck and kissed her softly on either cheek. 
Brenda simply received this act of tenderness, 


A DAUGHTi:ii OF SILENCE. 93 

volunteering no response whatever. Her immo- 
bility neither surprised nor repelled her aunt, who 
was used to it from the girl’s childhood. 

“ I’ve somehow got the idea, Brenda,” her aunt 
went on,” that your distress, yesterday, was . . was 
caused by Ralph Allaire.” 

“ Ralph Allaire ? ” she repeated, very much as if 
the name were a strong surprise to her. 

“ Am I wrong, my dear? Tell me if I am. You said 
you wished that you were dead. What made you 
speak like that? I — I sent for Allaire while you 
were lying so dumb and strange. There was some- 
thing in his behavior (he wouldn’t go upstairs and 
see you, th ough I asked him to) that set me wonder- 
ing and surmising. Oan you care for him at all, 
Brenda? Had you seen him and told him. . . ?” 

“ Told him what ? ” came the tranquil question as 
Miss Gabriella paused. 

“ Oh, you confuse me so, Brenda, with those big, 
calm eyes of yours! Well, so you won’t tell me 
anything ! I expected you wouldn’t I ” 

“ There’s nothing to tell. Aunt Gabriella,” said 
the girl measuredly. 

“ But you fainted dead away.” 

“ I — I wasn’t well.” 

“ But what made you unwell ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ What made you wish you were dead ? ” 

“ I don’t know \ I often wish it.” She turned 


94 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

and walked away from her aunt, who heaved a great 
sigh. 

“ There’s no reading her — there’s no finding her 
out,” mused her worried kinswoman. “ I told her, 
in so many words, that she had a heart. I flattered 
her grossly just to gratify my own curiosity. It 
was a remnant of my old Washington society man- 
ner. But diplomacy is as much lost on her as 
argument on the weather.” 

Still, Miss Gabriella was soon destined to take a 
less doleful view of her niece’s deportment. Two or 
three days later Brenda came home, one afternoon, 
in the company of Guy Arbuthnot. She had been 
having a stroll in the park (was this locality in- 
tentionally chosen or not ?) and Guy had joined 
her. He at once had seen in her a certain change. 
She was paler than usual, but the paleness made her 
more charming to him. She was even more silent 
than usual, but the added silence exerted upon him 
no disheartening effect. When they reached her 
stoop he remembered, as before, that he had done 
nearly all the talking, and said, as she was about to 
go indoors : 

“ What a babbler in the land you must think 
me ! If you’ll let me come in and sit with you for 
a few minutes I’ll promise not to be so horribly 
loquacious.” 

She looked at him, for a slight interval, with the 
placid, brooding gaze in which he had grown to 


A DAlIGfIT:ER OF SILENCE. 95 

find such sorceries. “ You may come in,” she said, 
“ if you’ll promise to be just as talkative as you 
were.” 

“ Ah,” he said, with the sublime humility of a 
lover, “then you are really not bored by my 
nonsense ? ” 

“ No.” 

Her “ no ” had for his infatuated ears the force 
and amplitude of a copious compliment. He went 
inside with her, and when they were seated togeth- 
er he began, in tones f ill of courteous yet drastic 
entreaty : 

“ Pray tell me, now, what it is that has altered 
you.” 

She gave him one of her rare smiles, which made 
him feel like begging her not to let it leave the 
lips that it so preciously illumed. “Why do you 
think that anything has altered me ? ” she asked. 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” he exclained. “ I feel that 
you’re somehow saddened.” 

“ I was never gay, surely.’ 

“You were never melancholy before. Not dur- 
ing the short time that I’ve been acquainted with 
you, and not during the longer time that I’ve 
watched you without having that great privilege.” 

“ Do you consider it, then, a great privilege ? ” 
she asked. The directness of her question star- 
tled and unnerved him. It was so unlike her ! 
He felt the color dye his face, “ I — I hold it a very 


96 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 


sweet and delightful privilege,” he said. And then 
his hand stole out, falling upon hers and clasping 
it. 

She made no attempt to withdraw her hand. 
She sat perfectly quiescent, there at his side. A 
little pause of utter stillness ensued between them. 
“ Brenda,” Guy at length said, “ I love you. I 
loved you weeks before I met and spoke with you. 
I shall be terribly unhappy if you cannot give me 
your love in return.” 

His flushed face was so close to her calm one 
that their breaths mingled. “ I do not want you 
to be unhappy,” she answered. 

That means. . . ? ” he softly cried. 

Her head drooped a little. “You must guess,” 
she said. 

“ Oh, I do guess ! ” And he covered her lips, 
cheeks and brow with kisses. They were the flrst, 
and they were so manifold, so bounteous, that the 
rich boon of them intoxicated him. 

He poured forth words of passion to her. She 
sat and heard them as if he had been narrating the 
chances and changes of some recent match-game 
on the Hoboken tennis-grounds. 

“ And you,” he presently demanded, drawing a 
little back from her, while he held each of her hands 
in each of his own. “You’re not really cold to 
me, Brenda ? You feel it in your heart to be my 
darling and devoted wife ? ” 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 97 

“ Wife ? ” she repeated, and drew both her hands 
away from his, crossing them in her lap. Her eyes 
held his own for the next few seconds with a mes- 
meric intensity in their poignaiice and search. 
“ You have not asked me to be your wife,” she now 
said^ “you have only told me that you cared for 
me.” 

He flung his arms about her and strained her to 
his breast with a kind of new apologetic fervor. 
“ I want you for my wife ! ” he said. “ I shall be 
so proud and glad if you will marry me ! Will 
you, Brenda ? Don’t answer quite yet, if — ” 

“I am ready to answer now,” she broke in. “I 
will marry you — yes. . .” 

Not long afterward(as at least it seemed to Guy) 
she rose and told him, with all her native placidity 
that it would be well to see her aunt at once and 
that she would go and fetch Miss Gabriella without 
further delay. 

“ By all means, do so,” he returned, while at the 
same time dreading the prospective ordeal. 

“ I want you to see my father, too, if possible,” 
said Brenda, just before she quitted the room, “ but 
I’m afraid you cannot to-day, as he is in one of his 
unsocial moods. . .” 

Hours -afterward, when night had come, and the 
narrow street was still with that stillness which, in 
a suburban town, will sometimes almost seem to 
7 


08 ^ DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

hum and purr, Brenda came out upon her stoop and 
stood peering into the lamplit gloom. 

The evening had grown oppressively hot, with 
that sort of thick, humid heat September so often 
brings. Perhaps Brenda had emerged solely for a 
breath of freer air, perhaps to muse upon the events 
which but recently had as much changed the current 
of her life as an avalanche may change that of a 
stream. 

She was engaged to wed this rich young Guy 
Arbuthnot. He was rich, by the way ! Her aunt had 
been right. With entire candor he had told them 
that he possessed a little over a million dollars, and 
would have about a million more if he should 
survive his mother. Miss Gabriella had seemed a 
little hj^sterical at first, and then a little awe-stricken. 
She would not hear of her brother not beine told, 
at once, but went upstairs, remained away some time, 
and finally returned in his companj^ Guy was con- 
siderably struck by Theodore Monk. Dishevelled 
and shambling though he appeared, there were yet 
about him the inalienable traces of the gentleman. 
Pie gave evidence of liking Guy, and talked with 
him for some time in a strain of cordiality and ease 
that made his sister’s cheeks flush with pleasure ; 
for poor Miss Gabriella was so anxious that the 
family ” should not produce a wofully out-at-elbows 
impression upon* this patrician young wooer who 
had descended to it from the skies. But abruptly, 


A BAUGHTIJB OF SILENCE. 99 

almost too abruptly for civility, Monk had risen 
and excused himself. Miss Gabriella, in a mortified 
flutter, sought to explain the sudden exit by saying 
that her brother was subject to attacks of faintness. 

“ Oh, perhaps he’ll come back,” said Guy. “ I 
thought he might probably have some specimen of 
a diamond upstairs that he wished to get and show 
me. He had just been looking, you know, at this 
ring of mine.” 

“ He hasn’t any diamond upstairs that I know of,” 
said Brenda. She did not suppose that her father 
would return ; his vanishment was to her merely 
one of the many whims and oddities which had 
caused his sister and herself to believe him, for 
several years past, insane. And Brenda was right ; 
her father did not return. 

The truth was, a kind of sudden terror had seized 
him. His laboratory was not his sleeping-cham- 
ber, as we know ; but he had gone thither, and 
had spent more than half the night there, lying on 
his lounge, and watching, like a mastiff, the chest 
containing his chamois bag. After a while the 
strange fit deserted him, and he went downstairs 
again into his sleeping-chamber. 

But Brenda knew nothing of this. As she stood 
on the stoop, prior to darkening the hall light and 
going up to bed, her mind was doubtless absorb- 
ingly concerned with affairs in which her father’s 
vagaries held no part whatever. The rays of a 


100 


A DAUGRTEB OF SILENCE. 


near lamp struck up against her face, and showed 
it against a dark background in pensive and sculp- 
tural beauty. Someone who came along the lonely 
street saw it for quite a while before she had seen 
his. And when she did recognize him as he paused 
at the foot of the stoop, her brow clouded savagely. 
She half turned, but paused as these words reached 
her — 

“ Don’t go in yet. I only want a word or two.” 

She slowly fronted him. Itw^as Allaire, and he 
had slipped up three or four steps. “ I want no 
word with you,” she said icily. 

He watched her wdth a sullen fire in his black 
eyes. “Has he asked you to marry him yet ? ” 

“ Yes — to-night.” 

“So soon, eh? Well, and you said ‘yes,’ of 
course.” 

“ I said ‘ yes.’ ” 

“ My congratulations,” he replied, and reached 
up oile- jiand toward her. 

But she slirank from it. “ I'd as soon touch a 
viper 1 ” she said, and passed with speed into the 
house. ^ 

He tossed his head a little as he descended the 
stoop. “ What do I care ? ” he muttered aloud to 
himself in the dead silence of the street. “ I’d have 
been a fool to act otherwise. I only did what any 
sane man ought to do.” 

He went home, found his mother wakeful, and 


A i>AU’GirTi:ii oir silence. loi 

sat and lield her fragile hand for more than an hour, 
sometimes smoothing her temples as well, or bath- 
ing them with a sedative lotion. All the while 
that he was playing this fondly attentive little r 61 e 
he kept thinking of a certain matter that had hot 
greed at its root. 

What if Theodore Monk had told him the truth ? 
He had scoffed at the possibility of that chamois bag 
containing real diamonds, but might he not have 
made a dire blunder in so concluding? Here was 
the telephone — to instance only one of those bril- 
liant discoveries which had set modern men agog 
with amazement. Did not our century stand on 
tip-toe with expectation of new marvels yet to be 
shown them by the panoramic yet trustworthy 
agencies of science ? 

He knew little of science, and in his days of 
early intellectual training he had gone to work 
with languor at all studies which dealt with mathe- 
matic exactitude. Astronomy, for example, liad 
fascinated him solely through its general con- 
clusions. He had had a fanciful respect for the 
transit of Venus, but he was wholly powerless to 
work out the technical problems concerning it. 
His imagination, always restive, had the upper 
hand of his reason in days before he dreamed of 
piercing the heart of Bianca by disclosures that 
her lover was a bigamist, or making Delamaine 
shudder at the altar when his former maniac wife 


102 


A DA UGBTEB OF SILENCE. 


darted melodramatically up the middle aisle. Im- 
agination had now acquired a diseased ascendency 
with him. Were it otherwise he would perhaps 
have decided, permanently, once and for all, that 
Monk was the slave of piteous hallucination. 

He got into his bed that night, with the cha- 
mois bag swinging like an inexorable pendulum 
over his pillow. It was one of his restful nights, 
for he had recently finished a last instalment of 
his current serial in the “ Luminary,” which he 
felt sure would handsomely pass muster. It was 
in the order of his duties, also, to furnish a 
“ sketch,” as the editorial powers termed such con- 
tributions, and which meant, if accepted, seven 
dollars in addition to his thirty dollars paid for 
the weekly slice of serial. He had finished his 
“sketch,” and had rather plumed himself upon its 
excellence. He anticipated a calm day to-morrow 
when he went down to the office of Mr. Spreckles 
in Pine Street to receive his needful wage. 

And yet his night was odiously restless and 
dream-perturbed. He tossed for two hours on his 
mattress, feeling the intense heat as if it were a 
mild shirt of Nessus, and thinking thoughts in 
which Brenda Monk played no slight part. But 
that chamois bag of .her father’s played a salient 
part as well. It dangled above his head in the 
dimness. Once, in a vague doze, he stretched up 
his hand and clutched it, seeing it distinctly, while 


A DA TIGHTER OF SILENCE. 103 

little sparks like those that glint from the facets 
of lit diamonds pricked through the dense con- 
cealing texture. 

On the morrow he went to Mr. Spreckles’ office. 
It was pay-day, and all the contributors were as- 
sembled, waiting their money from the “ Lumi- 
nary.” The journal itself had for several years been 
a great commercial success. Its editor, Mr. Sim- 
eon Spreckles, had been declared to have made 
in it a large fortune. He was a small man, 'with 
fiery hair and eyes that seemed to have no pupils, 
being all one scintillant saffron. Allaire never 
remembered to have seen Mr. Spreckles when he 
was not in a state of sharp excitement. He loved 
to scold and fume as other men love to smoke or 
tipple. He treated his contributors with a brusque- 
ness bordering on insolence, and not seldom trans- 
gressing its bounds. He professed to know litera- 
ture as one vast open book, 'though it was doubtful 
if he could spell correctly an ordinary English 
sentence. 

If the ghosts of Hawthorne, Irving and Cooper 
had assembled, some night, in a reproachful triad 
at his bedside, lie might liave scorned their phan- 
tasmal counsel with respect to the needs and 
aims of American fiction. He was magnificently 
self-satisfied in his own estimate of what American 
fiction should be, and when he condescended to 
any argument on this subject he would point 


104 


A DA UGHTER OF SILENCE. 


proudly at the testimony of his own financial 
success. The “Luminary,” with its “ Katy, the 
Street-Waif” and its “Hildegarde, the Bride of an 
Afternoon,” had really achieved pecuniary won- 
ders. Mr. Spreckles, like not a few other men, had 
filled his purse to repletion by an adroit coddling 
of contemporary ignorance and folly. 

Allaire found about twenty contributors to the 
“ Luminary ” waiting their pay on this especial 
afternoon. A good many of them were women, 
and some of them women anxious to be indemnified 
for a five-dollar or three-dollar “ sketch.” Pinched 
and thin faces were among this feminine element. 
A few could hardly speak ten words of correct 
English, yet could write with the “heart” and 
“ feeling ” that suited their tyrant in the con- 
coction of sketches. Mr. Spreckles wanted his 
sketches to contain something that he considered 
“ heart ” and “ feeling,” and the poor female 
drudges that quaked before his lurid stare and 
toothy leer did their best to supply his despotic de- 
mand. Three or four always left on “pay-day” 
with their manuscripts rudely handed back to 
them. Some left in tears, for five dollars they had 
failed to secure meant bitter household j)rivation. 
One or two of the ladies would come down town 
in smart gear, with feathered bonnets or bugled 
gowns, and give themselves the airs of duchesses. 
But even these important gentlewomen bowed 


A BAUGBmB OF SILENCE. 


105 


their crests before Mr. Spreckles. They had made 
hits with their serials ; they ate and drank to-day — 
but to-morrow, knowing the caprice and tyranny 
of the Caligula who transiently petted them, they 
realized that they might die. 

It was all a sad enough comedy to Allaire. He 
felt himself a part of it and yet aloof from it. He 
had no interest in his work ; he secretly despised 
every line that he wrote. Hardly a member of the 
shabby-genteel throng he met on “ pay-day ” had 
more than a tithe of his cultivation. 

* “ Your stories are good enough,” Spreckles ha(I^ 

often said to him, “ but they don’t catch on as they 
should do, because you won’t write down to the 
people. You’re forever flying your kite above ’em. 
You’ve got too much confounded rhetoric; you 
use too many big words. You ought to study 
Ella Dill worthy Devere. She’s a go every time. 

I give her eighty dollars an instalment because she 
deserves it. She threatens to go to tlie ‘ Fireside 
Friend’ if I don’t raise her to a hundred, and I 
guess I must. You can write all round her, but 
you will stick to your fine work. Get that into 
the magazines, if you can. We don’t want it 
here. We want plain English, lots of incident, 
and Sunday-school morality. That’s what takes 
in continued stories.” 

The “Sunday-school” morality often struck 
Allaire as a most farcical proviso. Murder, for- 


i06 A DAUGIITEB OF SILENCE. 

geiy, theft, arson, and a whole catalogue of similar 
crimes, would be graciously treated by Mr. 
Spreckles ; but at the least hint of adultery, seduc- 
tion or any erotic factor whatsoever, he scowled in 
judicial wrath. He required that all his assassins, 
of either sex, should be stimulated by motives 
which had no concern with sexual irregularity. 
Even in his droll pose' as a pseudo-literary arbiter 
he bore a certain relation to the self-righteous 
censors who exist in higher walks of letters. The 
real secret of his abhorrence, as Allaire well under- 
stood, had no relation to anything like inherent* 
principle. He wanted to sell his paper, and he 
had thus far sold it most profitably by a pretended 
scorn of all voluptuous taint. If the “ market ” had 
next week turned in favor of amatory or even 
salacious fiction, he would have been the first to 
set his columns bristling with “ off color ” para- 
graphs. 

To-day Allaire appeared in the big, bare, ugly 
Pine Street office with nerves none the better for 
a half-sleepless night, and with mood specially mili- 
tant against the bondage by which he deemed that 
fate had so sternly thralled him. Mr. Spreckles, as it 
turned out, was this afternoon in one of his harsh- 
est humors. According to custom, he addressed 
his contributors through an apertui-e Avhich con- 
nected unknown editorial regions of massacre and 
carnage with the more peaceful world outside. 


A DAUGHTER OF SILEHCE. 107 

Very few writers were ever admitted into Mr. 
Spreckles’s private sanctum ; and if such an event 
happened to any one of them in the presence of 
his collaborateurs, he would seem to these, after 
his reappearance, like a being who comes trailing 
clouds of glor}^ behind him. It was Mr. Spreckles’s 
habit to call out the name of each contributor who 
was to receive payment for work done during the 
week — or not to receive it — as the case might be. 
To-day everybody soon began to feel that there 
was storm in the air. Ella Dill worthy Devere 
was the first called, and she sauntered up in an 
elegant street-costume, with diamonds at her ears 
and a parasol-handle that must alone have cost 
what many of her sisters earned in a whole month 
by their less famous pens. But after a certain 
confab with Mr. Spreckles at his hole-in-the-wall, 
even the haughty Ella came away somewhat dis- 
composed. She had evidently been reminded that 
pride goeth before a fall, and that the loftiest 
literary greatness is not always impeccable. 

But Ella got her pay, nevertheless. She always 
did. Even the snarls of a Spreckles did not dare 
go too far with her. But they went very far 
with some of her fellow-scribes. Miss Ettie Cogs- 
well, an experienced sketch-writer, soon re-crossed 
the room with scarlet cheeks, clutching her manu- 
script. Then a sallow young man was severely 
snubbed for daring to write an Indian tale. “ As 


108 A PAl/GHTUB OF SILENCE. 

if you didn’t know by this time, Mr. Bagiey,” 
cried Spreckles, “ that Indians are dead as a nail 
and there isn’t a dollar in ’em! ”... To a trem- 
bling fat girl who seemed devoured by bashfulness, 
he fumed that her ghost-story hadn’t “ a bit of a 
real scare within ten miles of it.” ... A thin and 
hollow-cheeked woman got back from him a roll 
of writing and burst into tears as she did so. And 
then came one of those episodes that will make the 
most ossified heart which ever housed in a cynic’s 
breast grant the large latent goodness of humanity. 
Another woman, almost as faded and shabby as 
the one who was weeping, slipped toward her and 
slid an arm about her waist. 

‘‘Now cry,” she began to whisper, “your 
little Sally shall have those slioes, this afternoon, 
just the same. Why, mercy, I’ve collected nearly 
twelve dollars for sketches, to-day and yesterday. 
I feel just as rich! . . . Come, now, brace right 
up and stop crying. Next week the ‘Fireside 
Friend ’ may give you six for it instead of five.” 

“ I — I felt so sure this time,” quivered the other. 
“ It’s a great deal better than the one he took last 
week — oh, ever so much.” 

“ I dare say. I never have anything rejected 
that I don’t feel just that way.” 

Allaire heard some of this piteous conference and 
surmised the rest, as he sat waiting for his name 
to be called, with a sense that he was superior to 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. ’ 109 

every member of the little trash-scribbling coterie 
at right and left of him and yet allied to it by dis- 
tinct similarity of aim. Presently his name 
sounded from the lips of Mr. Spreckles, and he 
went forward with a certainty that this time even 
the most dyspeptic irritability could cast no slur 
upon his performance. He was to receive payment 
for the last instalment of a story, and expected also 
to receive notice that he could hand in the first 
chapter or two of a new one next week. Notwith- 
standing this faith in the continuance of such 
meagre prosperity as he had managed to secure, 
he was chafed and stunned by a severer discontent 
than usual. 

Hardly had he reached the orifice at which 
wei’e visible the red head and sloping shoulders of 
Mr. Spreckles than a small packet was pushed to- 
ward him, and a voice whose most cutting and 
snappish tones he had reason to know of old, ex- 
claimed with more than its ordinary crispness: 

“ Sketch won’t do at all. Perfect rot from be- 
ginning to end. Serial, too, ends horribly. It’s 
all been a fizzle anyway. There’s money for last 
instalment. You better take a rest, I guess. We 
shan’t need you for a few weeks at the very least.” 

Allaire turned pale. He slowly put the sketch 
into his pocket but, apart from this act he re- 
mained quite motionless, while staring straight 
into the yellow, feline eyes of Mr. Spreckles. 


110 


‘A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 


VIII. 

“ I’ve no more to say to you, Mr. Allaire,” af- 
firmed the editor of the “ Ladies’ Luminary.” 
“ Move aside, sir, if you please, and allow Miss 
Van Vechten to present herself.” 

A great bitterness and a greater fury had got 
possession of Allaire’s dark face. He turned and 
saw a sad, wearied woman approaching, drawn 
thither by the sound of her own name. 

“ I hope you’ll be less brutally treated than I’ve 
been. Miss Van Vechten,” he said, in a ringing 
voice. 

Mr. Spreckles thrust his head forward, with a 
glare coming into his look. “ How’s that, sir ? ” 
he cried. The trump of rebellion had never be- 
fore been blown within these walls. Frugal pay 
and high-handed coercion had dwelt here in dis- 
mal accord. One slave glanced at another with 
incredulous dismay. Even Ella Dill worthy Devere 
turned a shade paler, as though such defiance 
might mean blood. 

“You’re the meanest bully I know of,” Allaire 
now went dauntlessly on. “ You haven’t brains 
enough to write the worst story ever printed in 
your trumpery paper, but you treat people whose 
boots you’re not fit to black with impudence that 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. HI 

should long ago have cost you a kicking. Every 
author you employ hates and scorns you. We feel 
degraded by giving you the trash we do give. 
Your whole sheet is a shame to the man who edits 
it, to the poor devils that are forced by poverty to 
write for it, and to the ignorant gangs that fool 
themselves by reading it.” 

Allaire paused, and a second or two after he did 
so Spreckles dashed out of a narrow little door- 
way, aflame and bristling. He sprang with clenched 
fists toward the late speaker; but something in 
Allaire, fiery and yet cool, repelled and perhaps 
cowed him. The younger man not merely watched 
this bluff approach with hardy gaze and curled lip, 
but showed by a hostile straightening of the figure 
that he was well prepared to hold his own in case 
of assault. Soon, however, he turned on his heel, 
with a mutter of “ blackguard,” and walked at an 
even pace from the big, uncarpeted room. Yet 
the door had hardly clanged behind him when he 
felt such a sinking of the heart as no bodily chal- 
lenge of any earthly Spreckles could have pro- 
duced. 

He had quarrelled with the bread that fed him, 
and now his future stretched one hopeless blank. 
Some little money was left him, but he could not 
see the source whence a single new dollar might 
be earned. “Joyce Jarvis” was quite without 
repute except on the “Luminary,” and even there 


112 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


he had never gained a noted place. He might 
scribble the first instalment of a fresh story, only 
to have it rejected frigidly by the “ Fireside 
Friend ” and other kindred journals. 

He told himself that he had been an ass to speak 
out his mind, though, as he thus refiected, the stress 
of recent anger still kept up its tingle through his 
nerves. For his mother’s sake he should have 
borne with Spreckles. But now the die was cast. 
For his mother’s sake he must fill his heart once 
again with the fortitude of effort. Oddly mixed 
with his most selfish despair, lived anxiety and 
terror for her. This filial concern ran through the 
egoism of his moods like a glistening thread 
through some woof dark as if spun by imps from 
the glooms of caves. And while lie communed 
with his own ired and shadowed spirit there were 
moments when crime’s red hand seemed to pluck 
him by the sleeve. What would he not do to stab 
dead this leering dragon of poverty ? 

He hated to go home, just then, bringing with 
him a secret that must soon snap its bonds and deal 
misery to the dependent life he had thus far 
shielded. Wlien the afternoon had waned into a 
hazy autumn twilight he ceased from the sullen 
wanderings in which he had more than once half 
unconsciously stopped to Calm himself with heavy 
draughts of liquor, and dined at a cheap saloon 
where the lower Bowery spreads ugliest and com- 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 113 

monest. Later he went up town to a eertain big 
beer hall on Fourteenth Street, a little west of 
Third Avenue. Here he sat sipping beer for some 
time, expectant, while he brooded over the ills of 
his fate, that he would be joined between ten and 
midnight by men who often drank there and with 
whom he had often drank as well. They at length 
ap[)eared, in pairs, trios, or singly, and gave him 
the greetings of familiar comrades. Inwardly he 
detested most of them. They were so much like 
himself in the haphazard nature of their destinies 
and their days. The whole world of Bohemianism 
was privately odious to him, though he rarely 
failed to reap from such gatherings as the present 
an enjoyment keener than he would have con- 
ceded. But his grim estimate of these beer-bib- 
bing loungers had possibly a deep tinge of truth. 
They stood for a class that has long been clad 
with rosy misrepresentation. Bohemianism in 
foreign cities may have recommending qualities, 
but here in New York it is quite devoid of them. 
It demands of its votaries that they shall all live 
with a rather slovenly disregard of to-morrow ; but 
beyond the wise aims found in such teaching, it 
has no special code of counsel. It is popularly 
supposed to amuse itself a great deal, but there 
are chances that this creed is a delusive one. As 
a rule, to exist from hand-to-mouth is an existence 
based on pediments of anxiety. One may success- 


114 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

fully drug one’s-self with beer over-night and go to 
bed feeling that money is not, after all, so large a 
help to happiness; but next day one’s empty 
pockets have a trick of exchanging jovial myths 
for nude verities, and of making the stable earth 
feel shaky beneath one’s foot-sole. Bohemianism, 
too, is an immense refuge for sloth. Nothing is 
so easy, after you have dropped out of disciplines, 
as to affect the picturesqueness of laxities. It 
comes, by degrees, as natural to the Bohemian 
that he should sneer at society as that he should 
disdain his nail-brush. His revolts, however, are 
seldom born of much real mind. The non-conform- 
ists who shine as leading lights for their fellows 
are apt to secure better training-schools than mid- 
night taverns. We often speak of Bohemianism, 
too, as if it were a harbor of generosity, frankness 
and fraternity, while, in truth, it is remotely far 
from being either. Probe its outward professions 
and you seldom fail to hit against the hard service 
of self. These very men who rail at the falsity of 
human friendships and the plenteous lack of 
human benignance are themselves, in many cases, 
neither loyal nor friendly. They are fond of talk- 
ing about “heart” and “good-fellowship,” but 
more than half their phrases of this sort are the 
merest idle flourish. They will sneer at the dainty 
yet callous filigrees of fashion, but their own insin- 
cerities are legion. They assert a fine abornina- 


A DAUGHTJSB OF SILENCE. 


115 


tion of all shams and makeshifts, both in speech 
and demeanor, but the most ardent lover of caste 
and form has not a stronger cult than they for 
adroit idiom or shrewd concealment. Nowhere 
will you meet more persistent masqueraders than 
in Bohemia; the vice of posing for effect haunts 
it like a continuous fog. Its denizens are chiefly 
fops, though of a pattern cut by no patrician 
shears. The very shabbiness of their garb may 
clotlie a frivolous pride and self-assertion distinct 
as any flaunted by the airiest beau. 

Allaire listened to their talk to-night, and some- 
times broke in upon it with his own opinionated 
announcements. 

“ I don’t see how anybody can call Edwin Booth 
a great actor,” declared one of them, with his 
moustache wetly fringed by beer foam. “ He 
mouthed and strutted this evening in the vilest 
way. He hasn’t a gleam of nature ; he’s all posture 
and artifice.” 

“ He’s the divinest sort of dramatic art,” affirm- 
ed another. “ We’ve seen lots of chromos on the 
stage ; we’re forever seeing them. Booth is classic 
sculpture.” 

‘‘Oh, bosh!” clamored a third. “Booth can 
act — there isn’t a doubt of it ; but if he tried to 
make a reputation nowadays they’d cry him off 
the boards.” 


116 A DA UGHTER OF SILENCE. 

“ Why ? ” questioned Allaire, at this point, a 
little tartly. 

“ Oh, he’s not in tune with his time.” 

“ That’s your infernal old realism,” said a new 
voice. “ I’m so sick of realism ! It means paint- 
ing a lily or a pig-sty, without any preference for 
either.” 

Then there sounded a little din of voices, half 
merry and half simply mutinous. 

“ Zola prefers the pig-sty — always.” 

“ No, he doesn’t; look at Le Reve^ 

“ Bosh, Ben, you haven’t read it.” 

“Haven’t I?” 

“ No. You can’t read French ; you once con- 
fessed to me you couldn’t.” 

“ I must have been drunk.” 

“You were; that’s why you gave yourself 
away. . .” 

“Frank, stop youf nonsense; you’re forever 
snubbing poor old Ben. He’s perfectly right. 
Realism’s a nuisance. It floods the magazines, 
and—” 

“ Floats your poetry to oblivion.” 

“Come, now. . . When have the magazines 
printed a decent poem ? ” 

“ What do you call Holmes’s ‘ Harvard Song ’ ? ” 

“ Holmes ! Oh, bah ! He’s a doctor with a 
knack for turning pretty rhymes. Nobody ex- 


A BAUGHTilR OF SlLENCF. 117 

pected such talent in a saw-bones, and so he 
startled people into praising him.” 

“ He’s one of the wittiest men that ever lived,” 
here struck in Allaire. “ And if he hadn’t been 
so brilliant a humorist he might have made a bigger 
poet.” 

“ You’re right there.” 

“ No, he isn’t.” 

“ Longfellow’s the only American poet we ever 
had.” 

“Longfellow ! Pooh! He might have written 
every line he ever did write in lodgings at Chelsea 
or a villa at Richmond.” 

“ How about ‘ Hiawatha ’ ? ” 

“ Look here, now. . . there’s never yet heen a 
real American poet.” 

“ Except one.” 

“ Except three, I say I ” 

“ Except none, say L ” 

And so it went on. . . By and by, when the 
sleepy waiters began to turn out the lights, and a 
noisy throng about a large round table was the sole 
spot of luminance left in the dusky saloon, Allaire 
thought of his Hoboken boat and his expectant 
mother. He reproached himself, during his home- 
ward trip, for having stayed so late. Thoughts of 
suicide entered his mind as he was being swept 
across the ferry. He could- not swim, and if he 
should leap off into the black river he might so 


118 


A DAirGRT^a OP SILENCP. 


asilj drown before any aid could reach him ! . . . 
As it was, he shuddered to think of what despera- 
tion must visit him with the dawn of to-morrow’s 
sun. 

This dawn brought gladness to Guy, and through 
all the next week. He awoke next morning with al- 
most a song in his throat. He arranged to sleep in 
his Hoboken quarters, and thus constantly saw 
Brenda. He wrote his mother a long letter, which 
she answered briefly but affectionately, saying that 
she would soon return from Lenox. When she did 
return Guy brought his sweetheart over to see her, 
preferring that Brenda should join him on this 
occasion of his first meeting with his mother after 
the engagement. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot seemed to understand it all. 
She was repose and diplomacy in perfect concord 
as she welcomed her son’s chosen bride. It struck 
Guy that Brenda had never before been so wrapped 
in reserve. She looked well ; her pale, large, chis- 
elled beauty was accentuated by a dark gown and 
bonnet, of nice make and taste. Miss Gabriella had 
seen to all this, her niece remaining passive. Luck- 
ily Brenda had the face and figure whose effects 
are heightened by plainness of dress, for silks and 
like braveries were beyond the bounds of her aunt’s 
pinched means, and even these expenditures al- 
ready incurred were only made to seem less daring 
by the prospect of a brief betrothment. 


A DAirGjEm:ii of silencf. 


119 


After a while Mrs. Arbuthiiot’s equipoise near- 
ly left her. Guy could see that she was bewildered 
by Brenda, and perhaps alarmed as well. ‘‘ What 
strange creature is he going to marry ? ” the poor 
lady was presently thinking. “ I can’t make her 
out. I’ve never seen anyone just like her before.” 

A keen reader of his kind had once told Lucille 
Arbuthnot that she was the only thoroughly fash- 
ionable woman he had ever met who was also 
thoroughly lovable. Beyond doubt she deserved 
the name of fashionable ; any other life would have 
cost her actual pain. There would have been pathos 
in the fact of her never having had a daughter 
to bring out if Agatha had not supplied the place 
of one. Without perfumed rooms and the lights of 
festal chandeliers, she would have drooped like a 
fern deprived of shade. 

The patrician character, when shorn of arrogance, 
is usually very fascinating. Mrs. Arbuthnot had 
no more arrogance than a buttercup, and yet she 
was to her finger-tips an aristocrat. She felt her- 
self almost reeling, now, under the blow of her 
son’s choice. Agatha would arrive home that after- 
noon ; she had learned the truth by letter several 
days ago. It had been heart-breaking to realize that 
so winsome and high-bred a creature would never 
become Guy’s wife ; but to face the disaster of his 
marrying this big girl of snow, this type of torpor 
and inanity, bred thrills not exempt from terror. 


120 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


How could Guy really love her, and was the sway 
she exercised of a stainless and wholesome sort ? 
And when infatuation broke its own fetters, what 
misery might not result ? 

Her struggles with herself and with Brenda, 
that morning, were piteous, and in their way heroic. 
Brenda appeared wholly unconscious of her own 
repressions, while to her hostess they became sepub 
chral, seeming to wear both the stillness and leth- 
argy of the tomb. Guy’s mother had long ago de- 
plored the difficulties of talking with people outside 
of her set ; she was not in the least a snob herself, 
though she had a great many friends who were 
snobs, and sliared with these the distaste for total 
strangers. But in Brenda’s case she had come forth 
with a yearning and throbbing heart, and with the 
arms of her spirit maternally outstretched. She 
had been prepared to love Brenda and take the 
girl to her bosom, simply because Guy wished her 
for his wife. “ I will do this, I will do that,” her 
thoughts had run. There should be a little series 
of brilliant dinners ; there should be one or two dis- 
criminative kettledrums ; there should be making 
and receiving of calls ; there should be a general 
pretty and potent chaperonship. All would turn 
out well, and the “ queerness ” of her son’s matri- 
monial selection would be mantled with every de- 
lightful concealing art ; it would resemble the 
flinging of some fine spangled tissue over a bulk un- 


A I>ATfG£tTi:ii OF SILENCE. 


121 


couthly angular. Agatha was just the dear, staunch- 
hearted being to swallow her tears and play leal 
abettor, since she loved Guy so generously that she 
would seek self-effacement in the help toward his 
happiness. 

But now, on a sudden, all had miserably changed. 
To “ get on ” with Brenda was like striving to climb 
a hill of knee-deep lava. There was no reaching 
any summit ; there was no doing anything except 
retire foot-sore and fatigued. Mrs. Arbuthnot knew 
that her hand trembled as she bade her guest good- 
bye. She exchanged a glance with her son ; her eyes 
were replete with the mute , involuntary question : 
‘‘ What strange folly have you been committing ? ” 
Perhaps Guy understood. As he left the house he 
said to his mother, with tones of a most ordinary 
ring: “I shall be back this afternoon or evening, 
and remain all night, as usual.” Mrs. Arbuthnot 
tried to smile ; she had already heard of his pro- 
longed sojourn across the river, and had made an 
effort to joke about it before the full paralyzing 
sense of Brenda’s oddity had dawned upon her. She 
now raised a finger, while standing in the open door- 
way — her attempt at gayety was like a candle’s ex- 
piring flicker. 

Don’t keep him too late, Brenda,” she charged, 
with what to herself had the effect of a ghastly 
playfulness, and while the name “ Brenda ” lit- 
erally stuck in her throat. 


122 


A DAUGHTER OP SILENCE, 


“ Oh, no,” said the girl, as she descended the 
stoop at Guy’s side. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot closed the door. She went back 
into the drawing-room and sat down in one of its 
chairs, with her hands tensely clasped together. 
“ It’s most horrible, it’s most unbearable,” she 
whispered to herself. “ I wish Agatha were here ! ” 
And then she remembered that when Agatha came 
she might come with a weighted and bursting 
heart, and this thought blinded the unhappy 
lady’s eyes with tears. 


A.l)AVGlltER OR SlLEECE. 


12a 


IX. 

But Agatha, when she arrived that afternoon, 
bore no grievous or despairful sign. She had 
already learned by letter of Guy’s engagement, 
and on hearing from Mrs. Arbuthnot of the recent 
visit, she surveyed her informant with a look of 
humorous condolence. 

“ So the Hoboken goddess came to pay you her 
respects. Aunt Lucille? Well, certainly you don’t 
appear to have been much captivated.” 

“ My dear Agatha ! Captivated ! If you only 
could have seen ! ” 

“ Why, how is this ? You can’t mean that she 
shocked you ? ” 

“ Terribly, my dear, terribly,” moaned Mrs. Ar- 
buthnot. Her eyes were once more swimming in 
tears as she proceeded : “Not that she is vulgar — 
not that she isn’t handsome and even distinguished. 
But, oh, her stolidity, her stupidity!” 

Agatha listened, with head a little on one side. 
“ Be careful ; Guy does not like stolid or stupid 
women. Are you sure that she may not have 
masqueraded from some private little caprice?” 

“ She never knew what a caprice was. She is 
merely dulness deified.” 

“You mean that he deifies her?” 


124 A daugstmh of silfnck 

“Yes — and nature’s done so as well.” 

“She is very beautiful, then?” asked Agatha. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot closed her eyes and pressed a 
hand against one of her temples. “ How can one 
describe her? She is like a huge white cat, with 
eyes that stare at you and make you think of those 
milky, cloudy stones that they put into rings.” 

“But a very uncompanionable cat, I should 
judge,” said Agatha. 

“ Villainously so,” shuddered her aunt. “The 
sort that goes into a corner and licks its paws and 
wouldn’t rub up against you for a whole quart of 
cream ! ” 

“ I’m afraid. Miss Monk would hardly know how 
cream tastes.” 

“ She seemed a lady ; I must admit that — and 
thank God for it ! ” 

“ And yet you execrate her manners.” 

“Not her manners — no,” objected Mrs. Arbuth- 
not, “ for she hasn’t any. She has nothing but a 
kind of dignified deadness. Dear Agatha, I’ve 
been through such an ordeal! Your heart would 
have ached for me if you’d seen me ! ” 

“ It aches for you now ! ” said Agatha. The two 
women, seated side by side, stretched out their 
hands to one another. 

“ You darling girl,” murmured the elder, with 
hints in her voice of meaning more than it said. 
“ Oh, Agatha, if that heart of yours were broken 


A DAUGm'BB OF SILENCE. 


125 


in two, I believe it could go on being sorry for 
people with either of the pieces. Yes, and forgiv- 
ing people, too.” 

Agatha showed her brilliant teeth and tossed 
her delicate little head. “Pooh! I’ve never had 
anybody to forgive ; life’s treated me too kindly — 
And so your ordeal was so very hard a one ? ” 

Mrs. Arbuthnot flung up both her hands and 
then let them fall into her lap as though disjointed 
at the wrists. “ My dear child! You’ve no concep- 
tion of my distress ! Guy brought her up to me as 
I came into the room. At the sound of his voice 
my eyes filled, and without liearing more than 
half of what he said, 1 put both arms round her 
neck. It’s a big, solid neck — the kind some men 
think superb — ^}mu could eat your dinner on one 
of her shoulders. But somehow I’d no sooner 
touched it than the flesh underneath her gown 
gave me a feeling as though it were the draped 
marble of a statue. And she never even partly 
returned my caress. I kissed her cheek, but there 
was no answering kiss, except,- perhaps, a faint 
flutter of the lips.” 

“Aunt Lucille ! ” 

“ Actually, my dear ! . . Her arms, too, hung 

motionless at her sides — amazed as I was, I made a 
point of remarking this. And afterward it all 
grew more and more dreadful. She said, ‘ Oh, 
thank you ’ to a little speech of mine that must, I 


126 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


am sure, have brimmed with affectionate feeling 
I thought, at first, that it was shyness with her. 
But, no; she hasn’t any more shyness than a 
church-steeple. I talked of a hundred things, and, 
in the early stages of my despair, Guy, poor boy, 
helped me. But we both of us might as well have 
attempted to smile away a fog. I tried one sub- 
ject after another. To all she answered ‘yes’ or 
‘ no,’ and I began to long that her affirmatives and 
negatives might wear a touch of pique, of sulki- 
ness, of real disgust. But they were completely 
free from all such symptoms. The girl is just one 
great mental and emotional barrenness. Poor 
Guy! her face and her body have ensnared him. 
It’s like the old days of sorceresses ; it makes you 
think of that story about Circe and the swine.” 

Agatha put one hand over her aunt’s mouth. 
“ You mustn’t say that ! I can’t believe it of him^ 

“My dear, I couldn’t until I saw the woman he’d 
made choice of. . It occurred to me, as a forlorn 
hope, that perhaps Hoboken might strike out of 
her a vital spark or two. I asked concerning the 
‘ society ’ there. . . Did they have evening parties ? 
Were there many people whom she found it nice 
to know? Were the reports of malaria exagger- 
ated? . . Defeat, failure, discomfiture I . . Finally, 
I attempted the jocose. . . Were those elm-trees of 
which Guy had told me so very charming? Was 
not his account of the place colored by the attrac- 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 


127 


tiveness of a certain damsel he had met there? 
Did she not agree with me that my son’s history 
had stood a sad chance of trespassing upon the limits 
which divide hard fact from romantic fiction? . . 
Oh, if you could have heard her responses ! It 
would be rash compliment to call them merely 
mechanical. A clever girl could have drilled her- 
self into behaving like an automaton. Her be- 
havior glared with a native shallowness. I saw 
her watch the chairs and rugs and curtains, as 
though their novelty of hue and form surprised 
her. There was something animal — yes, that’s the 
word — about her mild, vacant stare. She appre- 
ciated nothing ; slie simply had the impression of 
strangeness. Oh, Agatha, I wish I could believe 
she hated me ! That would mean that she had 
some character, some individuality. And it would 
mean more,” continued the speaker, with her tones 
dropping into acute plaintiveness ; “ it would 
mean that she might have some real regard for 
Guy.” 

Agatha looked very grave at this. “ You think, 
then, that she has none — none? . . . You really 
think it ? ” 

“ I’m confident of it. She knows who Guy is ; 
he’s told her ; not boastfully, poor fellow, for he 
couldn’t do that. But she’s found out that he’s 
rich — that he’s a prize. . . Well, who could blame 
her for taking him? We see in our own little 


128 ^ UGHTEB OF SILENCE. 

modish world how girls behave. There’s an aunt, 
and there’s also a father. I’ve learned that the 
father is forever absorbed in some study . . chem- 
istry, was it not ? I forget ; his great pre-occu- 
pation was referred to, though not by her— Guy 
mentioned it; Guy filled up one of our awful 
pauses by an allusion to it. But the aunt is ap- 
parently active and a sort of manager. No doubt 
the aunt has pushed her on.” 

“ Pushed her on ? ” 

“ Pushed her into poor Guy’s waiting arms. . . 
I am to see them both at . . at dinner. Think of 
it! They are all three coming to dine with us 
next Thursday at seven.” 

“You invited them, then?” 

“ I’ve a dazed recollection that I did. I seem to 
remember it as we remember things in a haK- 
delirium.” 

“ Oh, aunt I And will Guy return to-night ? ” 

“ I don’t know . Yes, it seems to me that he 
said he would return.” 

“ In time for dinner?” 

“ It dimly occurs to me that he said in time for 
dinner.” 

Guy, as it proved, presented himself at about 
nine o’clock that evening. Dinner had been ended 
more than an hour ago. The. moment he entered 
the drawing-room Agatha rose to meet him. As 
she did so he perceived that his mother sat but a 


A BAUGHmB OF SILENCE. 


129 


little way beyond her, near a rose-shaded lamp, and 
yet in partial dimness. 

Agatha at once put out her hand. For years 
she and Guy had kissed one another when they 
met, but she did not look as if she expected to 
receive such a greeting from him now, and yet she 
did not appear unwilling to receive it. The com- 
bination of geniality and reserve was, in its way, 
triumphant for dainty subtlety. Guy simply took 
her hand and gazed at her, holding it until she 
began to speak. 

“ I’ve been waiting to wish you a great deal of 
happiness ! ” Agatha said. ‘‘ But no doubt you’re 
surer you’ll get it than I can possibly be.” 

“You mean . .?” he began, brokenly and em- 
barrassedly. 

“ That I haven’t yet seen the girl you’ve chosen. 
I missed that pleasure.” 

“ Ah ! ” he broke out, and passed her, not un- 
civilly but perturbedly, with the one little low- 
uttered word that left him keen as a disconsolate 
sigh. He went toward his mother, who did not 
rise, but lifted her face to his as he drew near her. 

“ Mother,” he said, as if half-addressing her and 
half-answering Agatha, “has no doubt found it not 
by any means a pleasure.” Then he sat down, and 
when all three were seated there came one of those 
pauses fraught with such painful awkwardness as 
9 


130 ^ DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

sometimes makes itself memorable throughout an 
entire life. 

The mere sight of Agatha had stirred Guy pain- 
fully. Looking for only an instant into her face, 
he had felt an impulse to fall on his knees before 
her and pour out some passionate kind of apology. 
But the absiu dity of any such proceeding would 
have struck him just as forcefully if his mother 
had been absent as it struck him now. A sense of 
vulgarity and indecency, too, would also have 
quelled him. Even to let Agatha infer that he had 
not wholly ceased from being her lover would have 
transcended impertinence and trespassed upon in- 
sult. He realized all this, no less ludicrously than 
sufferingly, and sat dumb, abashed, with an inward 
recognition of how this bright, fair, keen girl must 
see in him the subject for untold merciless raillery. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot broke the pause at last. “ I 
hope, Guy,” she said, with tones whose calm made 
her son think of thin ice over a quick-flowing 
stream, “ that I did not show the least incivility 
this morning.” 

The young man burst into a short, cold laugh. 
“ Incivility ! ” he exclaimed. “ What a word ! who 
thought of it? You were admirable; you always 
are. I m sorry she was not,” he added, in a voice 
full of his natural candor and gentleness. 

“ Ah, then, said his mother, leaning forward in 
her chair, “ 2/ou noticed— saw, Guy, how I gave 


A DA UGHTER OF SILENCE. 131 

everything, yet received — nothing ! ” She pro- 
nounced the last word with a woebegone accent, 
and let her body fall drearily backward as she 
did so. 

“ I have been telling aunt,” here broke in 
Agatha, “ that she perhaps expected too much. The 
next time it may be quite different. She may then 
form so opposite an impression ! Pray console her, 
Guy, with the assurance that this will happen.” 

It seemed to Guy, as he heard those few sen- 
tenecs, that human irony could go no further. 
“ Agatha is magnificent to-night,” he thought. 
“ She’s hardened herself into steel, and she’s just 
as wounding.” 

Aloud he said, with eyes that both sought hers 
and yet shunned them: “I can’t honestly admit 
that it may be different the next time. Brenda is 
curious. I — I felt, this morning, just how curious 
she is.” 

“ I wish she had been curious in one way,” said 
his mother. “ I mean about some special earthly 
thing.” 

Guy drooped his head. “ I know,” he faltered, 
“ I know she behaved very badly. At least it 
must have seemed so to you.” 

“Badl}^ my dear Guy!” his mother returned. 
“ I only wish she had done so. It would have 
been a relief. The trouble was that she did not 
behave at all.” 


132 


A DA UGHTEB OF SILENCE. 


Guy stared at the floor with set lips. “ I sup- 
pose you have been most unhappily impressed,” he 
soon said, “and I can’t wonder, I can’t wonder! ” 
Mrs. Arbuthnot, while her face lightened, gave 
a quick look at Agatha, which was not returned. 
“Oh, my dear son,” she broke out agitatedly, “if 
it were not yet too late ! ” 

Guy started, and flashed a severe glance upon 
her. “ Too late ! In God’s name what do you 
mean?” he said. “I’m engaged to Brenda, and I 
love her to distraction.” Here he laughed again, 
but this time in open mockery. “ As if I would 
give her up because she can’t babble Fifth Avenue 
platitudes ! ” 

He rose angrily from his chair, just as Agatha’s • 
cool, sweet voice struck in. “Your mother surely 
couldn’t have meant giving her up, Guy.” 

“ Yes, I did mean it ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Arbuth- 
not, springing to her feet. And she repeated, with 
forlorn emphasis, “ I did mean it ! ” 

Agatha now hurried over to Guy. “Your 
mother is depressed — unnerved,” she said. 

“ And I’ve excellent reason,” cried Mrs. Ar- 
buthnot. 

Guy looked across Agatha’s shoulder at his 
mother’s pale, working face. “ If you loved me 
better,” he exclaimed bitterly, “ you would show 
a less cruel spirit.” 


A DATTonTEE OF SILENCE. 1S3 

“ She does not wish to be cruel,” pleaded 
Agatha. 

Guy watched the girl intently for a second. 
“Just now,” he broke out, “I thought you were 
trying to riddle me with sarcasm. But now I 
know you are sincere. That always has been 
your way; when one needed you one could count 
on you. Ah, my — my sister, you have a beautiful 
heart ! ” and then he caught her to his breast and 
had kissed her on the lips before she could tear 
herself away. 

While he hastily quitted the room, Mrs. Arbuth- 
not turned to her flushed and startled niece. 

“ You see ! he loves you still.” 

“Aunt Lucille I be quiet,” chid the girl, with 
uplifted hand. 

“ It’s true, Agatha. Oh, if we could only make 
him sane again ! This is merely a madness. It 
will die out soon — it must. The point is to make 
it die out before he marries her. I don’t know of 
any better way than one.” 

“ That is. . . ? ” 

“ To bring you and her close together. The 
contrast may work marvels. It ought to, and I 
believe it will.” Mrs. Arbuthnot’s usually mild 
eyes had now a hysteric sparkle. “ I am so glad 
I asked her to dinner next Thursday. You must 
wear your pearls, my dear, and your most be com- 
ing gown. After that she shall come here and 


134 ^ DAVGHTEit OF SILENCE. 

stay with us. Nothing will so disillusion Guy as 
to see you two near one another.” 

“ Aunt ! ” cried Agatha, with cheeks that visibly 
burned. “ Do you suppose I would for an instant 
consent to such a plan ? ” 

“ Why not — if you win him back by it ? ” 
Agatha’s dark eyes glittered. “ Win him back ? 
I have never lost him, if you please. I — I never 
cared for him in the way you seem to mean.” 

“ Agatha ! ” 

“ No ; I never did.” 

“ I can’t credit you, my dear.” 

“ Then you will be most unjust to me,” said 
Agatha, drawing herself up and looking her lofti- 
est. “ You heard Guy just now, when he called 
me ‘ sister.’ I have no warmer regard for him 
than a sisterly one. I’m very fond of him, of 
course ; I would do him almost any friendly 

service. But you are mistaken in supposing ” 

“ Agatha ! ” broke in her listener, “ I will, I must 
suppose it ! ” 

The girl grew haughtier than ever. “ Are you in 
the habit of hearing me speak falsehoods ? ” 

Mrs. Arbuthnot drew back amazed. She had 
never seen her niece as repellingly stern as this. 
Agatha was like a brook whose ripples glass alter- 
nate shade and shine ; underneath all her moods 
had dwelt a sort of merry sub-current. But now 
she appeared cloaked in a novel harshness. 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 135 

“ Falsehoods ! ” murmured Guy’s mother. “ My 
dear, you’re incapable of them ! ” 

“ Well,” then, said Agatha, instantly changing 
both tone and mien, while she went up to her aunt 
and kissed her, in a quick, bird-like fashion, on one 
cheek, “believe me, now, when I assure you that I 
could not possibly even think of Guy as you sug- 
gest.” 

She was usually the soul of truth, in spite of all 
her volatile freaks and phases. Still, the serene 
little lie she told at present was not only glibly 
spoken but perhaps delivered with no more than a 
trivial cost of conscience. There are moments 
when mendacity would have no terrors for a saint. 

Brenda, meanwhile, at almost the same hour, 
was beset by no need of prevarications or disguises. 
Her lover had left her, and her aunt Gabriella had 
succeeded in learning enough to understand that 
the morning visit upon Mrs. Arbuthnot had proved 
sadly insufficient. 

“ From what I gather, Brenda,” she said, “ you 
didn’t make the least effort to — to let yourself out 
— to unbend — to be affable and sociable.” 

“ I was what I always am,” said Brenda. 

“ Ah ! ” sighed Miss Gabriella — “ that’s just what 
I feared you would be ! I dare say you’ve shocked 
and worried him. He looked as if you had, dur- 
ing the few minutes that I saw him. Didn’t 


136 A DAUGHTJ^H OF SILENCE. 

he show you that your conduct had been displeas- 
ing?” 

“ Not that I recollect.” 

Miss Gabriella took off her eye-glasses and vig- 
orously wiped them, an act so rare with her that 
it always meant strong exasperation. 

“Oh, Brenda,” she lamented, “3^011 don’t seem 
to care whether this magnificent engagement ever 
comes to anything or not ! And here am I, want- 
ing it should be short, feeling that it shouldn’t be 
trifled with, realizing that it’s a God-send to us all.” 

“You act as if you thought so,” was the reply. 
“You act so, I mean, to him. He sees it, of course. 
It must strike him as very low in you.” 

“ Low ! ” repeated Miss Gabriella. “ I’m . . I’m 
hardly accustomed to strike anybody in that way, 
3mu impudent girl ! ” 

Brenda gave a slight, tired movement of the 
head. “ Why can’t you let affairs take their own 
course ? ” she answered. 

“ And . . and lose him ?” 

“ Oh, you’ll not lose him.” 

“You say that with great confidence, indeed! 
But what do you really care ? Those ver^" clothes 
you have on, cheap as they Avere, haven’t yet been 
paid for. Money’s never been so scarce with us 
as it is now. I doubt if I’ve a thing fit to appear 
in at the dinner on Tliursday.” 

“ Then don’t go.” 


A DAUGflTIJR OF SILENCE. 137 

“ But I shall go ! ” affirmed Miss Gabriella. “ I 
want to let Mrs. Arbuthnot see that there’s at least 
one member of our family who knows what nice 
manners mean. I haven’t moved in the first circles 
of Washington for nothing. Luckily your father 
has an excellent evening-suit. He hasn’t put it 
on for an age, and I’ve kept it with great care. 
He’s thinner than he was in the old days, but it 
will serve him very well.” 

“ He’ll never wear it,” said Brenda. 

“Never wear it! He can't go without ic to a 
dinner over there ! ” 

“ He won’t go at all. That’s what I mean.” 

“ Oh, I dare say there’ll be difficulty. But I 
shall use all my persuasive powers.” 

“You know how he usually receives those.” 

“ Yes, yes, I do know,” admitted Miss Gabriella, 
gnawing her underlip. “But he’s fond of you still, 
ungraciously as he chooses nowadays to treat 
Here she lowered her voice a little. “ When I 
think of how he behaved the other evening I dread 
taking him, though.” 

“ Don’t try to take him, then 1 ” 

“What is it that makes him hate quitting that 
laboratory?” Brenda’s aunt now anxiously went 
on. “ One would suppose he had some great 
treasure there that he was afraid thieves might 
break in and steal . . . Why, Brenda, he sometimes 
gets up in the dead of night and goes there with a 


138 A DAl/G/Jrmi OF SILENCE. 

candle from his bedroom on the lower floor. Did 
you know this ? ” 

“ No. I’ve heard queer noises when I — ” She 
paused for a moment, and then continued — “ when 
I haven’t slept very well.” 

“ Don’t you always sleep well ? I’d have sworn 
you did.” 

“ I don’t — always.” 

“Well, your father’s mind grows odder every 
week. Tve heard those same noises, and risen 
to find him plodding through the hall like a 
sleep-walker. It’s very strange — it’s wretchedly 
strange . . And then about that knife. I didn’t 
tell you of that, did I ? ” 

“What knife ? ” questioned Brenda, though with- 
out any marked betrayal of interest. 

Miss Gabriella looked at her with an acid smile. 
She had purposely so arranged those last two sen- 
tences that melodramatic suddenness might invest 
them. 

“ Would a bomb-shell rouse you ? ” she ex- 
claimed, in sombre satire. “No; not, I believe, if 
it took the roof off ! ” 

“ What of the knife ? ” said Brenda, after a little 
silence, though with the air of being preoccupied 
by something else. 

Her aunt heaved a sigh of irritation. “I’ve a 
good mind to tell you nothing whatever about it,” 
she retorted. 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


lag 


X. 

But soon Miss Gabriella continued : “ I was 
horribly startled, yesterday morning, when I made 
the discovery. I had just entered your father’s 
room, having gone there to try and speak with 
him about the money due us on that old Wash- 
ington mortgage. I say Hry and speak with him,’ 
though Heaven knows it gets harder and harder 
for me to make his mind stay three minutes at a 
time on any rational subject . . He’d heard me, 
listening rather more politely than usual (which 
isn’t saying much) when his eyes wandered toward 
one of the tables on which he keeps that jumble of 
bottles and instruments. Naturally I looked in 
the same direction, and as I did so he sprang to 
the table, took from it a big, glittering knife and 
hid this in the breast of his coat. I confess, 
Brenda, that I was horribly startled at first. I 
thought that perhaps — well, never mind what I 
thought. Afterward he seated himself quite quietly 
and began speaking of the mortgage and assuming 
a much more sensible style than usual. I made no 
reference to that ugly knife, but it’s haunted me 
ever since. I’ve never seen anything of the sort 
in his laboratory before. And provided he’d just 
got it for some wholly innocent purpose, why 


140 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


should he have dashed to the table and hidden it, 
in that guilty way ? ” 

“ I can’t see why,” said Brenda. “ It must have 
been merely one of his whims. He is full of them. 
Why are you afraid ? ” 

“ Oh, pshaw ! You’d better ask me why the sky 
is blue. When a man’s conduct is strange as his, 
he oughtn’t to be left alone with dangerous wea- 
pons.” 

Brenda made no reply. It may have occurred 
to her that the electricity and the chemicals among 
which her father had lived for some time were also 
dangerous weapons. If the tale of the knife had 
at all affected her, she gave no evidence that it 
had done so. She had for some time thought her 
father mildly mad, and doubtless this new proof 
of his mental weakness did not cause her the least 
concern. 

From then until the Thursday appointed for the 
dinner at Mrs. Arbuthnot’s, Guy’s devotions con- 
tinued unflagging. He had grown almost uncon- 
scious, now, of her silences, and clad them in 
colors of such imaginative clearness that they lost 
all semblance of monotony. He still retained his 
apartment near by, but rarely worked at his his- 
tory for longer than a few perturbed minutes. 
Even then he felt that his task had become zest- 
less to him. When alone he found the face, the 
smile, the eyes of Agatha sliding into his thought 


A DAlTGHTIJIi OF SILENCE. 141 

as though they were plates pushed successively 
within the back of an empty camera. He could 
not account for this visitation. It had more to do 
with reproach and compunction than with passion 
or desire. He would return to Breuda in no less 
ardent mood because of it, and on meeting Agatha 
at home he would discover no fresher charms in 
her than those that he had long ago admitted and 
admired. Meanwhile, when he met his mother and 
her niece, a clogging mist of awkwardness ap- 
peared to cling about his intercourse with both. 
It was relief to arrive at about nine o’clock in the 
evening (as for the next few days he almost inva- 
riably did) and see guests assembled in the draw- 
ing-rooms. His mother asked him no questions 
regarding his absence from dinner. He surmised 
that she had schooled herself into an unrebuking 
posture. Agatha, at such times, beamed with 
graciousness, and he sought in vain for tlie least 
glimpse of her former complex coquetries. Affairs 
seemed to be hanging fire, as it were, until next 
Thursda}". Then, Guy felt, some sort of cloud 
would burst; he had no precise idea just what 
eruptive effect would on that occasion reveal itself. 
He refrained from a single inquiry regarding the 
dinner. He dreaded it, and yet had secretly de- 
termined to let his mother spread forth what form 
of feast she deemed preferable. If she chose to 
mingle Brenda and those two kinsfolk with dames 


142 


A DA UGUTER OF SILENCE. 


and gallants of her most select list, he would pre- 
sent to such course neither sanction nor discoun- 
tenance. At heart he pitied his mother, knowing 
that her pain was genuine and natural. He in- 
herited too much of her own sweet temperament 
not to comprehend how all its dulcet bells had be- 
come jangled. In other circumstances he might 
but too easily have sorrowed with her regret. But 
now his happiness, febrile yet imperative, forbade 
him from the full exercise of any such sympathy. 
During the next few days he induced Brenda to 
dine with him at a restaurant quite near the ferry 
in Hoboken, a pretty structure of recent build, 
which shows the improving force of modern archi- 
tectural taste. Here they were secluded enough, 
although the throngs coming in by the evening 
boats would sweep past their windows in the early 
autumn dusk. Afterward he would leave Brenda 
at her door and go over to New York, filled with 
the elfish glamours of her eyes and fancying that 
he remembered moods, expressions, avowals which 
had borne no real relation to her vanished self. 

Once or twice, while this little series of deli- 
cious episodes lasted, he strove to analyze the 
pleasure it gave him. As well to weigh in a 
pair of scales the dust shed from the wings of but- 
terflies ! True, Brenda was totally irresponsive. 
And yet this very trait endowed her in his eyes 
with a virginal enchantment. It was bliss to feel 


A DA UGHTEE OF SILENCE. 143 

that the spirit encased by so much tranquil maiden- 
hood yet waited for those thrills of fire which he 
was confident their closer union would awaken. 
“ It is her perfect purity,” he caught himself more 
tlian once inwardly saying, “ that makes me love 
her as I do. I’m not depressed to think that she 
gives me only a little love in return for my great 
love. She renders all that she has yet to offer . . 
on ne pent plus. The secret of my delight is what 
I physically find in her mixed with that splendid 
expectanc}^ which I constantly gain from my faith 
in her untried forces of emotion . . Ah,’' would 
sound the voice of his colder judgment, “all this 
may be the most flimsy highfalutinism ; I dare say 
that it is. No doubt the blunter but neater truth 
would be in confessing that if I suspected her of 
having ever cared for another man before she met 
myself, I should jump out of love with all the 
nonsensical speed that I’ve jumped into it!” 

The fated Thursday came on, for Guy, at far too 
rapid a pace. It seemed like a day with wings, 
that flew toward him from the ordinary measured 
progress of the calendar. Until Wednesday the 
decision of Brenda’s father still remained uncer- 
tain ; he had shown, at first, a marked reluctance 
to attend the dinner. Then Miss Gabriella’s fervid 
persuasions had seemed to conquer him, and his 
negative resolve had palpably weakened. But at 
length he had ensconced himself in a rut of stub- 


144 


A DAUGllTEE OF SILENCE. 


born compromise. He would go, he declared, but 
not to the dinner at all ; he would accompany his 
sister across the river some time after dark, and 
fetch Brenda home. Or Gabriella and Brenda 
could go together, and he would engage to present 
himself at the Arbuthnots’ later. That was his 
ultimatum, and Guy heard it delivered by Bren- 
da’s aunt on the evening of Wednesday. She 
brought the tidings almost with tears. Her 
brother’s behavior seemed to her the acme of dis- 
courtesy, and she explained to Guy in a breaking 
voice tliat when they moved among the most 
fashionable society of Washington Mr. Monk 
would have lost a finger rather than commit so 
flagrant a rudeness. 

“But now,” she went on, “he’s a nervous, en- 
feebled invalid, and I do hope your mother will 
pardon him. He and I will go over together and 
bring Brenda home.” 

It was a trying concession for Miss Gabriella, 
who longed to see once again the pomp and state 
of a real dinner-party. There was a touch of self- 
sacrifice, too, in her consent that Brenda should 
leave her behind. But then she reflected that if 
her brother were free to obey the dictates of his 
own humor he might never appear in time to act 
as escort in the late journey back from town. And 
a pretty kill-joy she would prove for Guy and 
Brenda, there on the boat, or in the trundling cars, 


A DA UGHTER OF SILENCE. 145 

or even in a hired coach, some time between mid- 
night and dawn ! 

“ Anyway,” she told her niece on the morning 
of Thursday, “ I dare say it will be more dignified, 
if nothing else, that your father and I should go 
late. Mrs. Arbuthnot should have called here 
first and invited us in person, though it may be 
that she imagined we wouldn’t notice the omis- 
sion. It would look as if she had yet to learn that 
our antecedents quite equal her own.” 

Thus Miss Gabriella, little dreaming that sheer 
grief had for a time dimmed all Mrs. Arbuthnot’s 
appreciation of the proprieties, and that she would 
have been the last among her gay-living associates 
to let creeds of class obstruct the impulses of true 
politeness. 

Brenda’s dinner-dress filled her aunt with tri- 
umph. It arrived on the morning of Thursday, 
altered and renovated from a robe that had once 
swept, as she would have told you, the most aris- 
tocratic floors in Washington. A little dress- 
maker in a side-street, who lived in very little 
quarters, had a . troublesome but very little baby 
and accepted unusually little sums as payment for 
her services, had effected the transformation. 
Brenda had felt like a giantess while standing in 
the tiny parlor and having the tiny woman flit 
round her figure, pinning in the garment here, rip- 
ping it open there, and in a third spot basting it 
10 


146 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


briskly together. When all was ended, Miss Ga- 
briella tingled with joy. The result was very 
plain, but it made Brenda look charming, with her 
uncovered neck and arms and the fleecy touches 
of tulle about her bosom. 

The little dressmaker knew the fashions, ob- 
scure as were both she and her belongings. She 
had a cousin who did a flourishing business over 
in New York and who had already seriously 
thought of leasing a house on Fifth Avenue and 
adorning its balcony with “ Modes ” in monstrous 
letters of gold. 

“ I know I’m right, ma’am,” said wee Mrs. Reese, 
when the last ‘trying-oii’ day had brought a faint 
smile even to Brenda’s lips as she glanced at her- 
self in the mirror. “ I know I am. It won’t shock 
any o’ them fash’nable folks over in the city. It 
canH. The ladies all go so to parties ; you take 
my word they do ! ” 

“ But it shocks announced Miss Gabriella 
coldly. “ I don’t like it at all. If you’ve sloped it 
down too much in front, Mrs. Reese, make the 
tulle a little higher and fuller over the bosom. 
Don’t you agree with me, Brenda? ” 

Brenda was staring at herself in the glass. 
“ No,” she presently said. 

“ No ? ” echoed her aunt alarmedly. “ Why, 
child, what do you mean? If you were a married 
woman — but even then it would be indecent ! ” 


A BAUGHTEB OF SILENCE. 147 

“ Mrs. Reese thinks it’s quite proper,” said 
Brenda, in her grave, staid way. 

“ Oh, indeed I do ! ” affirmed the little dress- 
maker. “ And you’ve such an elegant figure ! If 
I was you, miss, I wouldn’t wear a bit o’ jewelry 
on my neck nor arms. You can afford to go with- 
out any.” 

“ I can’t afford to go with any,” returned Brenda, 
as if addressing herself. Then she looked straight 
at Mrs. Reese and gave a short sanctioning nod. 
“ Leave the dress just as it is,” she added. 

“ Why, Brenda ! ” cried her aunt. In a girl so 
quietly reared, those words hurt Miss Gabriella 
like a sudden gross glimpse of immodesty . . . 

Guy was to call for Brenda that evening, shortly 
after dusk, and they were to be driven over to- 
gether in a carriage. The dinner would not com- 
mence until an hour which had for Hoboken a 
strangely dissipated sound. It was almost dark 
when Brenda stood dressed in her own room. Miss 
Gabriella had just retired, with ideas of beginning 
her own toilet and of rousing her brother to at 
least a sense of like future exertions. 

Brenda had never been apparelled in this way 
before. Her copious hair was gracefully yet sim- 
ply disposed; the white symmetry of her arms, 
breast and shoulders made you almost forget the 
trailing gown of light-tinted silk which neverthe- 
less gave her a new stateliness and captivation. 


148 A DAUGRTUB OF SILENCE. 

For several minutes after the exit of her aunt she 
surveyed her own reflected image. Then, with an 
impetuous movement that seemed to suit the tight- 
shut look about her mouth, she suddenly seized 
from the bed a long, loose, hooded cloak. The 
next instant she had covered her form with this 
darker garment and caught up her draperies, at 
their ampler part, with one hurrying hand. After 
that she slipped forth into the hall, and paused 
there as though listening. In an other moment 
she sped lightly down the slim stairs, reaching the 
lower hall. Here she again paused, while covering 
her head with the hood of the cloak. Evidently 
she heard nothing, for soon she had opened the 
small street-door and glided out upon the stoop. 
She closed the door with but slight sound, and at 
once descended the short flight of steps beyond it. 
Having now gained the pavement, she hastened 
along at a swift and steady pace. 

If some human ear could have been close enough 
to her parted lips it might have heard the sombre 
mutter which at this point was breaking from 
them. 

“ He’s never seen me like this. I’ll let him see 
me if he’s there. I’ll let him see me, though I 
do so hate and despise him ! ” 

Ralph Allaire, in his room on the next street, 
had just lit his gas and flung himself into the chair 


A DAUGIITA^B of SlLFNCF. 


149 


that faced his desk. The past few days had been 
one sharp, loitering torment. He had found means 
of borrowing a certain sum of money, and the sol- 
vency thus far vouchsafed him in a small way had 
allowed of his contracting one or two debts which 
had proved aidful against austere immediate needs. 
He had as yet told his mother nothing, and had 
been almost thankful for the prolonged spell of 
drowsy weakness which had made his reticence all 
the more facile. Meanwhile his vicious habits had 
gained a new, abrupt strength, as if they had been 
young serpents put under some forcing tropic 
influence. To allay an incessant gnawing of dread, 
he had used with greater freedom the baleful 
drug which already had lured him. As a conse- 
quence, his vivid yet strange fancy filled despair 
with shapes born of longing, and there were times 
when the walls of his dingy room would widen 
out into palatial amplitudes, or when the masks 
above his desk would turn into full shapes of men, 
all sumptuously clad and of many different climes, 
each seeming to pay him some sort of tribute, or 
at least to be there in his own honor and celebra- 
tion. Once or twice he looked within subterra- 
nean caverns where gold lay ambushed in lustrous 
plinths ; or, again he would see into labyrinths of 
denser earthly darkness from which priceless bur- 
ied gems burned out like multicolored stars. Still 
again these visions of afiluence and gorgeousness 


150 


A DAUGirmii OF SiLENCF. 


would fade into their grisly and haggard oppo- 
sites ; he had begun to taste some of the terrors 
which lurk at the roots of lawless pleasure. 

Always dominant with him, now, was the de- 
sire to open that chamois bag of Theodore Monk’s 
and find what really were its contents. He 
brooded over this design until his brain ached 
with discouragement. “ How enter the house un- 
seen, and am I not stark mad to dream of it?” he 
would sometimes murmur half aloud, while he 
looked from his own back window to that window 
in the rear of the Monks’ dwelling which belonged, 
he was well aware, to the small, high room where 
Brenda’s father sat among mysterious chemic and 
electric surroundings. A mode of ingress at last 
occurred to his fevered mind. It demanded bold- 
ness and it meant danger, yet he was in just the 
mental state to exploit one and court the other. 
Late though Monk’s light burned every night of 
the week, there came a time when it went out and 
when the presumption might be made that he had 
quitted the attic chamber for his own bedroom. 

Now and then fits of skepticism would visit Al- 
laire, when he called himself a fool for dreaming 
the bag contained real diamonds. He found at 
the Mercantile Library, one day, a certain scien- 
tific book of a popular kind, and read there that 
small black diamonds had been made by means of 
passing electricity through pure carbon. This was 


A DA TIGHTER OF SILENCE. 


151 


enough to set his nerves thrilling. Beyond all 
doubt Theodore Monk had swept further along in 
his discovery, and had become a veritable diamond- 
maker. 

The rest of that day had passed deliriously to 
him, and it had preceded the one on which we 
now regard him while seated before his cumbrous 
old desk. As twilight had fallen he had felt him- 
self grow calmer, though throughout this day also 
he had been scarcely in a conscious condition. 
His faculties were aflame with a Monte Cristo 
dream. He saw himself the owner and dispenser of 
millions. If he should really secure a bag of 
actual diamonds, his first point would be to dispose 
of the stones in various parts of the world, thus 
anticipating Monk as regarded the manufacture of 
more. His mother should go with him, and per- 
haps altered air and living would restore her shat- 
tered health. To accomplish the theft of the 
bag must be his first step ; next he must assure 
himself that he had become the possessor of genu- 
ine gems. Afterward a voluptuous future waited 
him. No more fret; a continuous pathway of ease 
and joy ! 

To-night, having lit his gas and seated himself 
before his desk, he refrained from drawing the 
shade of the near window. Theodore Monk’s 
lighted panes yet gleamed to him. By peering 
forward a little he could see the dusky scroll- 


152 DAUGHTER OP SILENCE. 

work of the wistaria vine that clomb thither, and 
mark the white stretch of wooden fence that inter- 
vened between the rear doorways of the two 
houses. 

It was very strong, that vine ; its ligneous coils 
had a vigor there was no doubting. They would 
hold him, if only he could mount them with 
enough catlike nimbleness. The night, too, would 
be dark, and this was a quiet neighborhood. Such 
an autumn chill was in the air that nearly every 
window would be closed, and any noise he might 
make after midnight would pass for some sort of 
mere feline scramble. Luckily a dense grapevine 
flooded the fence of the yard just below him. He 
had scanned this possible help closely in the day- 
time and had grown assured that his primal ascent 
could be effected with agile surety. 

Oh, there was risk, there was risk, he excitedly 
mused ; but then what prize ever tempted the 
hand of man unless risk of one kind or another 
girt and hedged it? Besides, the whole proceed- 
ing was merely a robbery ; it was no crime of 
darker hue than that. If he gained his booty he 
knew where to hide it. Theodore Monk might 
perhaps rave a little over his loss, but even if he 
declared that the bag brimmed with diamonds, 
who would believe his assertion of more worth 
than the lightest figment of fable ? 

Wrapped in thoughts like these, Allaire sat 


A DAUGHTEB OF SILENCE. 153 

with one elbow on the sill of the casement, his 
head supported by his uplifted hand and his gaze 
directed at the light which had already begun 
to shine and which now held for him a terrible 
enticement. 

Suddenly a sound as of garments that swept 
his floor made him start and turn. Even as he 
did so, the word “ Mother ” fell from his lips. 

“ It isn’t your mother,” said a low, soft voice. 
And then he saw a shape that seemed to bloom 
out of the dull commonness of the chamber, with 
arms and neck like sculpture. 

Brenda,” he faltered, rising. 

She stood before him quite speechless. The 
vision that she made, here in this plain, humdrum 
place, was one of dazzling beauty, however it 
might have shone elsewhere. Her dark cloak, 
still grasped with one hand, had been flung off 
sideways into shadow. The gas-light was not so 
meagre but that it played as with caresses upon 
the lustres of her raiment and the pearly tints 
of her skin. 

“ Brenda,” he said again. She had dawned upon 
him like one of his recent hectic reveries embodied 
and palpable. Such women as this had peopled 
them, with robes of cost and color, with limbs and 
bosoms thus alluring. It was hard to conceive of 
her as so transformed. He had not imagined such 
a change in her as possible. . He came toward her 


154 


A DAmHT:^B OF StLENCF. 


with outstretched hands, with glistening eyes, with 
parted lips. 

But she receded the next instant. ‘‘No,” she com- 
manded, in the same faint yet clear voice. “ Don’t 
touch me. I’m not for you — I’m his.” She pointed 
to a great knot of crimson roses at her breast, and 
then waved a hand from which broke white, liquid 
sparkles. “ He gave me these flowers — this ring. 
I belong entirely to him, now. I’m going to his 
house — to a dinner that his mother holds in my 
honor — mine 1 ” That last word fell from her as if 
swollen with bitterness. 

He stared at her for a few seconds in silence. “ I — 
I never thought you could look like this, Brenda.” 

Her lip curled. “ Well, you see me now. I 
wanted you to see me so just for once. . .” 

She turned, but at the same moment he sped up 
to her and caught her round the waist. His kisses 
lighted warm and quick on her cheeks, and at last 
found her lips. Till then she had resisted, but now 
she grew submissive in his embrace, and he felt her 
form shudder as if with passion. 

“ Brenda, “ he murmured,” forgive me ! I always 
cared for you ! It can’t be that you don’t know I 
did. You were cruel to come, yet now that you’re 
here ” 

She writhed out of his arms before he could end 
the sentence, and shot from the room. . . 

“ I can’t think where she’s gone,” Miss Gabriella 


A hAUGBim OP SILENCE. 


155 


was saying over the banisters to Guy, in a half dis- 
hevelled state, as he looked up from the little hall 
below. “ She was in her room just now. She 
wouldn’t go into the street dressed as she is. At 
least I should’ t sup ” 

Here sounded the grating of a latch-key, and 
Guy fumed, opening the door himself. Brenda 
passed in, with glittering eyes and roses on her 
cheeks that rivalled those at her bosom. 

Guy felt a thrill start from the soles of his feet and 
tingle to his hair. He was fascinated, yet some- 
how repelled. Where was the old innocent look ? 
Had it fled with the advent of these fineries which 
her falling cloak disclosed ? 

“ Why,” called Miss Gabriella in high rebuke 
from the hall above, “ it isn’t possible that you 
went out into the street like that!'’’' 

“ Have you been waiting long ? ” Brenda said to 
her lover. 

“No,” he answered; ”I’ve just arrived. How 
cold your hands are ! But your face looks flushed. 
Where were you ? ” 

“ Oh, I only went a few doors below, to let some- 
one see my dress.” 

“Some girl, or girls, no doubt,” he smiled. 

“Yes; how do you like me in it ? ” 

“ Yau are superb. But. . . ” 

“ Well ? ” she questioned. 

“ Nothing, Brenda. . . Kiss me.” 


156 


A DAlTGItTua OF SILENCE, 


XI. 


Allaire went back to his seat beside the window 
and remained there for some time, after the depart- 
ure of Brenda. He had apparently forgotten the 
light across the way. With head clasped between 
his hands and with body leaned broodingly for- 
ward, he sat before his desk in the attitude of 
one tortured by neuralgic pangs. But on a sud- 
den he threw back his head with a defiant toss, 
and folded his arms as if in blended challenge and 
resolution. 

“ That’s past and gone,” he muttered ; “ it’s all 
dead, all dead. You can galvanize a corpse, but 
you can’t bring it to life. . . . I’ve other things 
to think about now . . other things to think 
about . .” 

As if his own words had struck a reminding 
note for him, he started and glanced over at 
Monk’s window. The light was no longer there. 

Instantly it struck him that this unusual event 
might be owing to the dinner of which Brenda 
had spoken. If only he had thought of that sooner ! 
He might have kept watch upon the house and 
satisfied himself of Monk’s actual exit. He at 
once quitted his own quarters and hurried into 
the next street. The front of the Monks’ house 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 157 

looked as if at least one of its inmates must still 
be remaining there. But while he thus concluded, 
the slits of shine faded from the blinds of the 
little parlor, and soon two figures emerged upon 
the stoop. Presently he had recognized them, and 
made quite sure that they were Monk and his 
sister. 

He followed them until they reached the 
ferry-house and disappeared within its doorway. 
Then a faintness assailed him, and for a moment 
he staggered as if drunk. But soon afterward he 
entered a saloon, and steadied his nerves with 
almost a tumblerful of indifferent brandy. 

Miss Gabriella was now destined to go through 
an odious ordeal. She had gained the Christopher 
Street ferry with her brother, and they had entered 
a car. All through this part of the journey Monk 
had remained grim and taciturn. 

“Do be a little more cheerful,” said his sister, 
after the car had begun to jingle along with them. 

“ Cheerful ? ” he echoed, vaguely and coldly. 

“ Yes ; you’ll be expected to talk, you know, 
when you get over there. And, Theodore, you 
once could shine so in society ; you used to be such 
a man of the world. Don’t you remember ? ” 

“Yes, I remember,” he said, with a sidelong 
glance at her from his dim, plaintive eyes. His 
manner had been nervous and restless since they 


158 ^ DAUGHTEB OF SILENCE, 

quitted the ferry-boat, and now he suddenly 
amazed her by saying : 

“This won’t do. There’s no use ; it won’t do at 
all.” 

“ What won’t do ? ” she queried, anxiously. 

“ Oh, can’t you see ? ” he returned, with an accent 
fierce almost to savagery. “ I can’t go there to- 
niofht. I can’t, and that ends it ^ ” 

“ Theodore, are you ill ? ” 

“Yes and no. I’m ill in one way; my mind’s 
upset. I must go home.” 

“ Go home ! ” 

“You needn’t glare so, Gabriella. People are 
staring at you.” He pulled the side-strap of the 
little “ bob-tail ” car. It stopped, and he got out, 
his sister following. 

They stood and faced one another in the lamp- 
lit street. “ What does this mean, Theodore ? 
You don’t expect to take me back with you?” 

“No; you can go on alone. Who’ll harm 
you? ” 

“ Go on alone ! ” wailed his hearer. “ Oh, Theo- 
dore ! ” 

“ Then you can come home with me. There 
— you have your choice.” 

“ But you say you’re not ill. Oh, this is too 
much ! It’s barbarous in you.” 

“I’m sorry you think so.” As he thus spoke 
she looked into his eyes and saw the wildness there 


A BA TIGHTER OF SILENCE. 159 

that had long ago worried her. “ I don’t mean it 
as barbarous,” he went on gloomily. “ Something’s 
caught me, gripped me. If I should go any 
further with you I think it might set me mad.” 

“You’re mad already,” she thought. Then, 
after a few seconds of flurried reflection, she said 
aloud : 

“ Very well; leave me, if you please. I will go 
on alone. I’m old enough (and ugly enough, too, 
perhaps) to take care of myself.” She half turned 
away from him, with her face one bitter frown ; 
then she veered toward him again, and with voice 
all forlorn tremor, continued : 

“ Never, never., as long as I live, shall I forget 
your treatment of me this night ! ” 

Afterward, when once more seated in a car, 
her heart smote her for the sternness of those 
parting words, and she regretted not having 
treated her unhappy brother like the weak hypo- 
chondriac she had long deemed him, and gone 
back at the dictate of his fantastic freak. ... But 
it was two late now for the indulgence of these 
more clement ideas. 

The Arbuthnot dinner was one of those discreet 
and tasteful little banquets for which its hostess 
had long been renowned. But socially it was a 
sad failure, and Guy’s mother well understood why. 
At a small dinner general conversation is a neces- 


160 


A BA UGH TUB OF SILENCE. 


sity ; if it fails, one might as well have candles 
that burn blue. Mrs. Arbuthnot had asked several 
bright persons of either sex. One of the guests, 
a man whose repute for good sayings carried such 
weight that even his stupid ones were often ca- 
ressed and honored as depar lero% took in Brenda 
and did nothing throughout the whole dinner but 
gaze at her and murmur compliments. Agatha, 
whom her aunt had expected to shine, was like 
her old jocund self seen through a blur of haze. 
Guy appeared repressed and dispirited. The 
others talked with an evident sense of odds against 
them. Brenda had startled everybody by her 
simple, generous, classic beauty. Her dress, too, 
was in perfect keeping with her reputed fortunes. 

Already rumor had spread queer tales about 
her being a factory-girl in a New Jersey suburb, 
a waitress in a Hoboken saloon, and the daughter 
of a German laundress. Her presence was a 
breathing refutation of these reports, and one or 
two male gossips then at the table burned to reach 
“ the club ” and shatter ugly romance by the 
announcement of poetic fact. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot saw her scheme failing miserably. 
Agatha refused to aid it, and Brenda had some- 
how stormed the whole dinner-party with her 
silence. 

“My dear,” she said to her niece, as the ladies 
left the table, “ how unlike yourself you seemed ! ” 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 161 

“ Did I ? ” replied Agatha. “ It occurred to me 
that I was the one chatterbox present.” 

“ Every one seemed absorbed, somehow ; was it 
in her? ” 

“ She is very beautiful,” said Agatha. 

“ How can you say so ? ” replied her aunt. 

“ How can you not say so, aunt Lucille ^ ” 

“ Because, my dear, I have seen you. ” 

“ Ah, you should have some far stronger reason ! ”• 

Agatha joined Brenda just as the latter was seat- 
ing herself on one of the couches. “ Do you come 
over to New York often. Miss Monk?” said Mrs. 
Arbuthnot’s niece, taking a place on the same 
couch. 

“Oh, very seldom,” answered Brenda. 

“ I see,” said Agatha piquantly ; “ in a certain 
way, you made New York come over to you.” 

“ If you mean Mr. Arbuthnot,” said Brenda, and 
smiled a little. 

“ Oh, I don’t quite call him all New York just 
yet,” cried Agatha, with her old merry manner. 

“ I hope he doesn’t persuade you that he’s anything 
so prodigious.” 

“ No. He isn’t boastful.” 

“Ah, he has many fine traits. I trust you’ll 
appreciate them. I can speak of him as a sister, 
you know ; we’ve lived so long together.” 

Brenda’s translucent eyes quietly devoured the 
speaker’s face. To Agatha the glance was magnifi- 


162 


A BAUGUT^B OF SILENCE. 


cent ; it made her think of a tame tigress — and per- 
haps, if all were told, not so wondrously tame a 
one, either. 

“ He is very fond of you,” said Brenda. “ He 
often speaks of you.” 

“ Pray,” said Agatha, “have you been reduced 
to this at so early a stage of your acquaintance ? ” 

“It might make some girls jealous,” observed 
•Brenda, as though carelessly filling a pause ; “ but 
then I’m not of the jealous kind.” 

“ What is the quotation ? ” laughed Agatha. . 
“ ‘ He jests at scars who never felt a wound.’ 
Wait until you are wounded.” 

“ Perhaps I need not wait.” 

“ Oh, then you have had . . experiences,” 
ventured Agatha, though she did not put th© 
words as a question. 

“Who hasn’t?” 

“ And that is why you are no longer jealous ? ” 

“Well, perhaps it is. And you ? ” 

“Oh,” smiled Agatha, “I’m not engaged.” 

“ And you think that because I’m engaged to 
Guy it follows I should be jealous of him ? ” 

“ Well, yes — if he made you so. That is, unless 
you were immensely sure of him. Then, I sup- 
pose, he could not make you so.” 

“ I’m not immensely sure of him,” said Brenda, 
shaking her head, I’m not sure of him at all” 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 163 

Agatha felt herself turning a little pale. “ But 
you believe he loves you,” she said. 

“ He thinks he does.” 

“ But you do him a wrong,” bristled Agatha ; 
“you make his nature out to be shallower than it 
is. Guy isn’t a man to let imagination lead him 
by the nose, and especially in those very important 
matters.” . . Then her voice hardened a little, and 
it came over her like an instinct to draw somewhat 
away from her companion. “ But I — I am tempted 
to think,” she went rather hesitantly on, “ that you 
don’t care very much about all this.” And then 
her dark eyes dwelt with a sort of hunger on 
Brenda’s face. “ Do you ? ” 

“ I don’t understand you,” answered Brenda 
bluntly. “ Care about how much he cares for me ? 
Is that your meaning ? ” 

“ Oh, no, no,” hastened Agatha, with chilled and 
lowered voice. “ 1 feel so certain that you must 
care about that! ” 

“Must?” 

“ Oh, yes ! For how could you have engaged 
yourself to him were it otherwise? To become 
his promised wife was of course to love him, and 
to love him must be to take the keenest interest 
in exactly how much love he gives you back.” 

Brenda had been looking down, but she now 
raised her eyes and scanned Agatha’s face and 
figure, in her collected, unwinking way. 


164 


A BAVGriTUB OF SILENCE. 


“You re very shrewd,” she said. “I begin to 
see what he meant when he spoke of your wit. It 
wasn’t only the wit that say^ good things ; it was 
. . . Ah, here’s my aunt,” Brenda broke off, thus 
ending a speech longer than many that she was 
used to make from one year to another. 

Miss Gabriella came into the room with what 
she flattered herself was an air. Little Mrs. Reese 
had not devoted all her counsels to Brenda’s outfit. 
The lady was not dressed half showily enough for 
an assemblage like that which she now entered, 
but what she wore had the right droop and finish. 
She invented a little falsehood about the sudden 
and rather alarming illness of her brother, and 
then almost immediately plunged into her Wash- 
ingtonian past. Mrs. Arbuthnot presented her to 
the ladies with whom she had been talking, and 
thenceforth nearly all speech was paralyzed except 
that of Miss Gabriella herself. You would have 
said that having gained one evening’s foothold 
into the beloved grand monde^ she desired to make 
all she could of that transient sojourn. Between 
herself and Brenda the contrast was indeed strik- 
ing ; one clad herself in silence as with a mantle ; 
one decorated herself in loquacity, as with knots 
of flying ribbon. 

Mrs. Arbuthnot listened, laughed, and warmed 
most humanely to her new visitor. Miss Gabriella 
struck her as a little provincial now and then — or 


A BAUGH TEM OF SILENCE. 


165 


perhaps “ rusty ” would be the truer word. But 
after Brenda she proved a delicious surprise. Here 
at least was life, thought, action, even though 
tinctured with caricature. The graciousness of 
Guy’s mother made her guest’s time pass with 
the speed of a joyful dream. When the gentle- 
men appeared. Miss Gabriella’s nostrils positively 
quivered like those of the trumpet-hearing war- 
horse. As Brenda tapped her on the shoulder and 
said, “ It’s time to go, aunt,” she felt almost like 
bursting into rebellious tears. 

“ You were much quieter than usual at dinner,” 
said Guy to Agatha as they now chanced to meet 
in the general movement that soon occurred. 
“ Were you not well? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” came her reply. “ No doubt your 
Brenda was absorbing me.” 

“ And you’ve since talked with her?” 

“ A little — ^yes.” 

“ One could hardly do much more. She’s dis- 
couraging when you try to get on with her in that 
way. Didn’t you find her so ? ” 

“Yes . . answered Agatha, lingeringly, 

while she looked away from his face. And then, 
addressing him with much more directness, “ But 
I found her discouraging for other reasons.” 

“ Other reasons ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ What were they ? ” 


166 A DAUGHTJ^n SILENCE. 

“ Perhaps I had best not tell you. If I should 
tell you perhaps you would not believe me.” 

“ I can’t imagine myself doubting the truth of 
anything you should tell me,” was his earnest and 
deep-voiced reply ; “ that is, provided you told it 
with serious intent.” 

“ You mean, Guy, that you would not doubt my 
sincerity. But I’m sure you would not believe 
me to be speaking truth in this instance. You 
would think me blindly wrong.” 

“ Try me.” 

“ As you please. It’s this, then : that girl does 
not care a feather for you.” 

He turned slightly paler, but no sign of anger 
came into his face. “ A feather is a very light 
thing,” he said. 

“ It isn’t lighter than vacuum.” 

“ You think her feelings quite null? ” 

“ Entirely. But I think something more than 
that. She’s either cared, or she cares now, for 
someone else.” 

His brow clouded. “ If I thought so, Aga- 
tha ! . . But you tell me this — you ! It’s not like 
you to deal in mere mischievous fancies. What 
can have prompted such statenjents? Naturally 
they are altogether without proof.” 

“ They are instinct,” faltered Agatha. “ No, 
no,” she went on ; “ I’ve not a shred of proof. 
And I dare say it even looks malignant in me — ” 


A DAUGHtlJE OF SILENCE. 167 

“ Malignancy and you are tne antipodes.” 

“ W ell, I have said it, Guy. Despise it as utter 
silliness if you please.” 

But be could not, being certain of bow taint- 
lessly disinterested was the source whence it 
sprang. Even if Agatha loved him to distraction 
and had felt cut to the quick by his engagement, 
she would tear out her tongue rather than speak 
one word of insidious malice about the woman who 
had supplanted her. 

“ She warned me from impulse,” he reflected. 
“ She had it on her conscience that she should be 
so visited with distrust and yet nol tell me of her 
misgivings.” 

And he, too, had had his own ! They had crept 
across his heart at odd moments. Their very irrel- 
evancy had aggravated him, and sometimes the 
faith which followed them was tinged, by reaction, 
with repentant reverence. 

It annoyed him greatly, that evening, to find 
himself saddled, as it were, with Miss Gabriella 
during the return to Hoboken. There she sat, 
opposite him in the darkness of the carriage, ex- 
citedly praising his mother’s high-bred ^manners, 
the furniture and decorations of the Arbuthnot 
drawing-room, and the “ tone ” of both his male 
and female guests. Her monologue bored Guy to 
death, and yet like the journey over the river it 
must take its course. Brenda, sharing the same 


168 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


seat with her aunt, was enveloped both in silence 
and gloom. Now and then a street-lamp would 
send its transitory flash through the carriage-win- 
dow and show her in her draperies like a kind of 
living photographic negative. Occasionally Guy 
would speak to her, forcing her to answer. This 
dreary blending of shadow and silence became a 
new irritation to nerves on which Miss Gabriella 
was not precisely pouring balm. It seemed to sym- 
bolize that very state of indifference — perhaps of 
inconstancy — which Agatha’s warnings had hinted. 

The drive over appeared to Guy interminable. 
He had decided to spend the night at his own 
quarters in the little town, and it was with a thrill 
of acute relief that he at last dismissed the car- 
riage for good while the ladies trundled in their 
wraps up the narrow stoop. On entering. Miss 
Gabriella went at once upstairs. There was a dim 
light in the parlor, and Brenda made it brighter. 

“ It’s after midnight,” said Guy, patting his 
arms about her, “ and I’ve no business to stay five 
seconds. But will you let it be five minutes? ” 

She did not answer, and he did not seem to ex* 
pect an {tnswer while he stood softly sweeping her 
face with his kisses, pausing sometimes at either 
cheek or temple, though always lingering longest 
at the lips. But suddenly he drew away from her, 
and his arms, fell at his sides. She began quietly 
to undo her cloak. 


A DAUGHTUB OF SILFNCE. 


169 


“ Brenda,” he said, at length taking one of her 
hands and drawing her toward a sofa, “ will you 
let me tell you of a thought that came to me while 
I sat there in the blackness of that coach and only 
caught dim glimpses of you every two or three 
minutes ? ” 

“ A thought ? ” she inquired. 

“ It was this ; How little I know about your 
past life ! ” Here she at once dropped her eyes, 
and he leaned very close to her, not touching her 
hand any longer, but both caressing and beseeching 
her with his look. “ I wish you’d not be quite so 
reserved about all that,” he went on. “ I wish 
you’d . . you’d confide in me a little. Couldn’t 
you ? ” 

She sat staring into her lap and not offering a 
single word of reply, until he pressed her arm and 
said with rebuke and remonstrance in his voice : 

“ Brenda, why don’t you answer me, dear?” 

She looked up, then, though her gaze did not 
meet his. “ I’m not like those ladies who were at 
your mother’s to-night. No doubt they have had 
lives full of . . variety. So little has happened 
during mine.” 

“It must have been uneventful — very,” said 
Guy. “ But in the dullest places one may have 
certain things occur to one. Here, for example, 
your beauty must have roused admiration . . 

He began to hesitate, then even to stammer, as he 


170 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

again spoke. “I — 1 know there are not many men 
here, Brenda, who — well, that is, for a girl of your 
refinement they might seem — even before we’d 
ever met, I mean — altogether of a grade — ” 

A short cry of impatience left her, and she rose 
with a rather heavy frown. “ That girl,” she said, 
more angrily than he had ever heard her speak, 
“ has been putting ideas into your head.” 

“ That girl ? ” 

She laughed coldly. “Oh, don’t pretend not to 
know the one I mean.” 

Guy bit his lip. “ Brenda ! ” he exclaimed, “you 
seem oddly out of temper for nothing.” 

“For nothing?” she laughed again, with a me- 
tallic hardness. “ I saw you talking with the girl 
you call your cousin. She had been talking with 
me before that. She asked me rude questions and 
dropped rude personal hints. What is it her busi- 
ness ho^v much or how little I care for you, and 
whether (as she puts it) I have had ‘ experiences ’ 
or not? ” 

Guy still remained seated, watching her in her 
resentment, fascinated by it, though not pleased. 
His native sweetness almost precluded in him the 
possibility of wrath : he was a man over whose 
ashes pity might hereafter have inscribed Quia 
multum amavit; all his wrongdoing, or nearly all 
of it, must of necessity spring from loving too 
much, and he felt the same repulsion for anger 


A DAtJGBTER OF SiLENCF. 171 

that he did for any sort of hatred or malice. 

“ Agatha was wrong to address you like that,” 
he now said. “ But she meant no real harm. She 
is prepared to be your loyal friend as she is already 
mine.” 

^^Youv friend — she !” sneered Brenda, and half 
turned away. 

Guy sprang to his feet, then. “ What do you 
mean ? ” he asked. 

“Pah! that she’s in love with you. Anyone 
can see it with half an eye.” 

“ Oh, Brenda I ” he exclaimed, looking at her 
sorrowfully. “You must not think that Agatha 
would be capable of coming between you and 
me?” 

“ I’m not at all sure,” was the curt and even sul- 
len response. “ Women know women better than 
men do.” 

“ Ah, not always I ” protested Guy. 

“ To make you try and pump me as to whether 
I’d ever had any beaux before I met you ! ” mut- 
tered Brenda, with tones that seemed to carry the 
harshness of ground teeth in them. Still tho 
third time she laughed, and the sound made Guy 
feel as if he should like to stop his ears. 

“ You do her a fearful injustice,” he cried. “Ah, 
Brenda, I thought you were amiable ! ” 

“ Oh, yes,” she said bitterly, and with an aban- 
donment wholly uncharacteristic ; “ you thought 


172 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 

I’d play into Agatha’s hands with the meekest of 
spirits, and let her use me to suit her own ends.” 
She spread out both beauteous, milky arms as if 
in sarcastic acquiescence, and sank into another 
chair at some distance from the sofa that she had 
just quitted. “ Very well,” she pursued, “ I’ll sub- 
mit. You’re to catechize me about the number of 

lovers I’ve had, and ” 

“ Hush, Brenda ! ” 

“I’m to answer you like an obedient slave. 
You want submission — ^you and that innocent, 
well-meaning Agatha of yours ! ” 

“ Brenda, hush, I beg of you.” 

“ Come, now, begin,” she persisted, in scathing 
mockery. “ What is question number one ? ” 

“ Ah,” cried Guy, his eyes almost filling with 
tears, “ I shall never make the faintest allusion to 
your past again ! My God, Brenda, don’t you 
know that I trusted you when I engaged myself 
to you ? Here, my darling,” he hurried on, drawing 
a velvet case from his pocket; “ this trinket came 
too late for the dinner, but I was not sorry, after 
all, since your neck was lovelier without it; and 
now I am still less sorry, because of the peace- 
offering it enables me to present you with.” 

He came toward her, holding a radiant string 
of big, choice diamonds in his uplifted hands. 
Brenda’s eyes glistened a little as they met the 
scintillating jewels, but she did not rise, and there 


A DAUGETTUB OF SILENCE. 


173 


was the hard look about her lips that women 
nearly always wear when their speech trembles 
upon some daring confession. Guy stooped and 
let the circlet of white fire clasp her neck, where 
it lay like the sheen of frost upon snow. He had 
just fastened it and drawn backward a little to 
witness better the effect produced, when a wild 
cry rang from the upper regions of the house. 

Brenda started to her feet. Once again the cry 
pealed out. It was nearer than the first had been, 
and so fraught with affright, that to hear it and 
not feel wrung by it was hardly to be human. 

Guy sprang toward the door. Then, in an- 
other moment, a hurrying, white-faced shape, 
that they both could at first hardly recognize, 
crossed the threshold and sank in a huddled heap 
on the floor. 

“What is it?” cried Guy and Brenda in a 
breath, as they leaned over the horror-stricken 
woman. 

“ Tour father ! she gasped, glaring up at her 
niece. “ He . . he . . Oh, it’s too horrible ! ” And 
with these words Miss Gabriella, for perhaps the 
first time in her rather self-reliant life, swooned 
completely away. 


174 


A DAUGHTEU OF SILENCE. 


XU. 

Going straight back to his rooms after he had 
made sure of the course taken by Theodore Monk 
and his sister, Allaire told himself that he would 
promptly execute the purpose formed many hours 
ago. Postponement would be folly, for Monk so 
seldom left home on any pretext that another 
chance like this might not occur in weeks. Of 
course there was always midnight to work in, but 
Allaire shrank from the intense stillness of that 
time with a nervous man’s true aversion. Besides, 
how did he know that Monk had not the habit of 
sleeping with one ear open, forever prepared to 
start up at the least imagined peril that threatened 
liis precious bag ? Now Allaire could feel at least 
safely sure that the coast was clear — or would be, 
after he succeeded in reaching it. He knew the 
Monk household well. It contained only one ser- 
vant, and she was a decrepit old woman, some- 
what deaf, who would probably prove neither a 
wary nor austere sentinel. 

It was a breezeless autumn night, damply chill, 
with hosts of gold stars beaming in a misted way, 
as if seen through water. Allaire passed his 
mother’s room almost on tiptoe, and with a very 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 175 

slow tread, listening to make sure that she was not 
restless. Quite soon he had hidden upon his per- 
son the two or three instruments which he had 
already secured as aids to his intended plan. They 
were not the tools of the professional house- 
breaker, but he had little doubt that they would 
amply serve. A short flight of wooden steps led 
from his chamber into the yard below. He quietly 
descended these, and then glanced behind him at 
the quarters, level with the ground, where dwelt 
a family of working-people who quartered in the 
upper floors of the house. Dimness and silence 
held here an equal reign. He advanced toward 
the grapevine, and with little hesitation sought to 
reach, by its help, the top of the fence which it be- 
draped. His efforts were soon rewarded with suc- 
cess, but in making them he both broke and dis- 
lodged the grapevine, though perhaps to his 
excited senses these injuries and displacements 
appeared more trifling than they really were. 

To creep along the fence toward the great wis- 
taria was now an easy enough task. A thrill of 
triumph at length shot through him as he grasped 
the thick, tree-like stems of this second vine. 
What splendid support was here ! 

Crouched, preparatory to beginning this higher 
and far more perilous ascent, he turned and sur- 
veyed with one swift yet comprehensive glance all 
the rears of the opposite houses. There were 


176 


A DAUGHTJ^B OF SILENCE. 


lights in not a few of the windows, but he could 
discern no sign of a watcher. 

He set his teeth together. Beyond the vine he 
seemed to see, poised in air, the chamois bag, a 
dingy speck against the moist autumnal dark. 
From its opened brim poured diamonds whose 
brilliance faded like the dying sparks of a rocket. 
This phantasm nerved instead of alarming him. 
To his disarrayed mind it bore the emphasis of a 
hopeful omen. 

The distance which he had to climb was not 
great. A small brick structure like the Monks’ 
dwelling does not measure at all mightily from 
basement to attic. The sturdy wistaria gave him 
no mean vantage of grip and brace. Weaker 
thews than his own could have dealt with it. 
The chief danger as he clomb was that his weight 
would tear the vine from its place of support. 
Once or twice, indeed, he paused, fearing such re- 
sult, so tremulous became the ladder by which he 
mounted toward Monk’s leaf-framed casement. 
But soon he found himself on a line with it; he 
could stretch out one hand, clinging with the 
other, and tap its panes. 

Could he do more ? Could he lift the window 
itself? Or was it fastened on the inside? Had 
this last state of things been actual he would 
never have descended without an attempt to force 
ingress even at the cost of tell-tale noise. But no 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 177 

such Ugly impediment met him. An upward push 
opened the window with scarcely a sound. To 
enter the room beyond was simply to swing his 
body forward and take one short, secure leap. 

He stood within the laboratory. It was dismally 
dark. He could see on all sides the multiform 
objects it contained, but only in vaguest outline. 
He groped for a shade at the window, and when 
his touch lit on one he drew it down. Then, with 
the little box of tapers that lie carried, he struck 
a light. In the flare thus created he searched for 
gas, candle or lamp. Yonder, on a table loaded 
with many other marks of the absent chemist, he 
perceived a common gas-burner for reading, high 
as it was ungainly. 

The room was presently illumined quite to suit 
his purpose. He knew but too well where the 
large chest stood. Trying it, he was not disap- 
pointed that it should be locked ; if its lid had 
yielded he would have felt immediate alarm as to 
the whereabouts of the chamois bag. 

But a stern task now confronted him. The 
chest was heavier and far stronger than he had 
supposed. The instruments which he had brought 
for the purpose of breaking its lock refused such 
office. In vain he struggled with the obstinate 
steel and the oak no less unyielding. A good 
half-hour was spent in these fruitless efforts, 
though it seemed thrice as long. The sweat began 


178 


A ' DA UGHTER OF SILENCE. 


to roll down his face and his hands felt numb with 
exertion. He had the impulse to shriek aloud in 
exasperation one minute and to weep fiercely the 
next. A dread beset him that Monk might return 
before his work was through, and then another 
dread began to torture him that he could never at 
all compass it. But finally, with a great victorious 
thrill, he managed to pry apart the lid ever so 
little. After that, with the lever-power thus 
gained, he worked in certainty of swift results.. 
These came ; and presently he had plunged his 
hand within the chest. It contained a few rolls of 
papers, a number of books tumbled pell-mell to- 
gether and some metal appendices to instruments 
that were perhaps lost or wrecked. For several 
seconds he could discover no traces of the chamois 
bag. Then, in one corner of the chest, he sud- 
denly laid his grasp upon it. His heart seemed to 
stand still as he drew it forth. It was tied at the 
top with merely an ordinary string. He bore it to 
the table Avhere the lamp was burning, and soon 
had spread forth some of its contents. 

Diamonds ? Why were they not ? He had never 
seen diamonds in the rough, but these grayish, 
irregular stones decidedly resembled what he had 
heard and read of them. A wild gladness over- 
came him. He took the glimmering things in his 
hands and held them to the light while he gazed 
upon them with eyes that flamed greed. Then, 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 179 

pressing them to his mouth, he kissed them hun- 
grily again and again — with as much ardor, indeed, 
as if they had been the lips of the loveliest woman. 

But on a sudden he grew fearful lest his own 
foolish delay might breed disaster, and began with 
great expedition to empty into his various pockets 
the contents of the bag. He had already found 
out that the door of the laboratory was locked on 
the further side; and now, very abruptly, he be- 
came conscious that a key was being turned in this 
door. 

It was too late to attempt flight. He stood near 
the lamplit table, grasping the chamois bag. His 
gaze was fixed on the door. The grating of the 
key grew louder. Presently the door swung back 
and Monk appeared on the threshold. 

The new-comer did not at first perceive Allaire. 
But the room was lighted, and this fact caused him 
so great a shock that he uttered an instant cry of 
alarm. 

“ Who’s here ? who’s here ? ” he called, in a 
quivering voice. Then, as he darted forward, his 
eyes fell upon Allaire. 

“You devil!” he broke out; “I know what 
you’re here for 1 ” 

Allaire’s face was white as paper. “ I’m 
trapped,” he said, “and own that I am. You 
tempted me, Mr. Monk, the other day, when you 
showed me this bag, and now 


180 


A DAUGffTJEH OF SILENCE. 


“ My God ! ” broke in Monk. He had just seen 
the bag which the thief held, and the pried-open 
chest whence his treasure had been reft. In 
another moment he dashed toward Allaire, his fu- 
rious eyes blazing from his white face. “ Give me 
that bag, you scoundrel ! ” he cried, and at the 
same moment he snatched up something from the 
table that shot out a little glint as he did so. 

Allaire was now desperate, and showed it. 
“ What I’ve got,” he said, in his throat, “ I mean to 
keep.” 

“ Ah, you do ! ” 

“ Yes. If you make them so easily you can let 
me have these and make more. Here are my 
terms. Monk,” he went on, pale-lipped and savage- 
ly determined : “ I’ll swear to you that I’ll never 
tell a living soul you’ve found out this secret, and 
allow you every chance to get together as many 
gems as your skill can produce. I’ll ” 

“ That bag ! ” swept in Monk’s hot command. 
“ Give it up, and give up every stone you’ve 
filched from it ! If you don’t, by God, I’ll kill 
you ! ” 

He struck forth with one hand, striving to 
clutch Allaire by the collar. In his other hand he 
held a knife, and lifted it. Allaire slipped back- 
ward, just in time. The table was now between 
himself and Monk. He had more than half emp- 
tied the bag, and though it still retained both weight 


A PA UGHtER OF SILENCE. 181 

and bulk, he thrust it into one of his coat-skirt 
pockets, cramming it there by a violent push. To 
do this was to lose the gain of his altered ground, 
and Monk doubled on him before he could again 
place himself in defensive posture. Once more 
the strenuous hand shot out toward his collar, and 
this time gripped it. But Allaire ducked his head 
like an adroit wrestler and rid himself of the 
clutch. Monk sped up to him again, and now 
with the knife ready for a fatal plunge. Allaire 
saw the weapon as it was driven downward, and 
seized the wrist that steered it. 

After that occurred a frightful contest of life 
with life ; for a trip of Monk’s foot cast his body 
full against that of his foe, and the two men rolled 
upon the floor, one striving to retain his weapon 
and horridly use it, the other bent on wresting it 
away. The fight was brief,, and the frailer man 
soon lost in it. Allaire felt as if a demon swayed 
at him when at last he had wrenched the knife from 
fingers it slit redly in quitting them. He struck 
the tremulous breast beneath him with a rage that 
it seemed for a few mad moments as if seas of 
blood could not surfeit. He slew like the monster 
of destruction into which fate and his own turbid 
soul had turned him. . . . 

When he rose from the floor Monk lay upon it 
quite dead, bleeding from many wounds, with eyes 
that stared up glassy at his assassin. 


182 


A DAUGHTiJR OF SlLENCF. 


XIII. 

That evening, in her dim-lit room, Mrs. Allaire 
woke, as she had more than once waked of late, 
from the stupor which for long intervals would 
enthrall her. She did not know the hour; she 
simply realized that it was night. Her first 
clear thought was that a continued spell of utter 
weakness had partially vanished and that she now 
felt in a way less nerveless and inert. Her second 
thought was of her son. Was he in the next 
room? 

“ Ralph,” she called. 

No answer. “ Ralph,” she called again. 

Still no answer, but instead of it a sound like 
two or three staggering steps. 

She rose on her elbow and peered backward 
from the bed. At this moment she saw him com- 
ing forth from his own room. He was buttoning 
his collar, or so it seemed. He wore different 
clothing from that in which she had last seen him. 
His face was livid as he paused beside the bed. 

“ My son . . that smell of things burning,” were 
the sick woman’s first words. ‘‘ What is it? ” 

“ I — I burned something, mother.” 

“You’re dressed in your thick winter clothes, 
Ralph.” 


A DAUGHTER OF SlLEECE. 


183 


“Yes . . I changed my others for these. It grew 
so chilly.” 

“ I thought it had got to be warmer, some- 
how. . . Ralph, how pale you are.” 

“Pale, mother?” 

“Yes ; and your hand trembles so.” 

“ Mother, listen to me.” He bent over her as he 
thus spoke, and what he next said had for her eager 
ears a terrifying* fleetness. “ I must go away ; I 
must go at once. But I will try to come back to 
you very soon — perhaps to-morrow evening, and 
perhaps a little sooner. I don’t know just when 
it will be, but I shall try my best not to leave you 
long alone.” 

“ Ralph, Ralph ! ” she cried, clutching his arm 
with her skinny, waxen hands. “What has hap- 
pened Something dreadful, I know ! ” 

“ Something has happened, mother,” he replied 
huskily. 

“ Tell me what it is, my boy — tell me, tell me ! ” 
she pleaded. 

“ I — T can’t, mother.” He stooped as if to kiss 
her, and then drew back. “ I’ve left some money 
just there on your bureau. If you’re in need of 
anything, the girl downstairs will always come up 
and attend you ; she’s a willing little creature, you 
know, and the bell is yonder by your pillow. I’ll 
do my best to see you soon again. I will; I swear 
it. Good-bye ! ” 


184 


A BAUGUTEB OF SILENCE. 


‘‘ Ralph ! No, no ! ” she insisted. “ Tell me, 
my boy ” 

But he was gone. She sank back in bed with a 
nameless horror chilling her feeble heart. . . 

Allaire meanwhile sped away into the streets. 
He felt urged from home by an irresistible force, 
which conquered even the old filial impulse of pro- 
tection. He burned to put some sort of note- 
worthy distance between himself and the scene of 
his late crime. He kept wildly telling himself 
that it was not a crime at all — that he had killed 
in self-defence only. But he liad killed, never- 
theless. A stealthy inward voice kept whispering 
to him that the law would be merciless if it dis- 
covered what hand had slain Monk. He had gone 
to the man’s chamber as a thief. Death had come 
of his presence there, and that death meant the 
one worst criminality. 

He had destroyed his bloody clothes by fire ; he 
had destroyed in like way the chamois bag, and 
filled his present garments with the stones that it 
held. Somewhere in hiding, for a day or two, he 
would wait results. He had money enough to 
last him for a little while yet, and then a great 
sum might flow in to him from the shrewd and 
careful sale of half or a third of the stones. There 
were chances that his passage to and from the attic 
window might be traced by certain horrid signs. 
If this turned out to be true he would learn it all 


A DA UGHTDR OF SILENCF. 185 

through the newspapers. Once sure that he had 
roused suspicion, he would quit the country by 
some eastward-bound steamer. It would cost him 
keen pain to leave his poor mother helpless, but he 
would manage to send her funds — he would find a 
means when the stones had brought him plenteous 
tribute. 

He crossed the river in one of the ferry-boats, 
and so fierce a tumult swayed his brain that he 
found himself afterward unconscious of having 
made the trip ; it was only when he saw certain 
streets and buildings that he grew convinced this 
was really New York. He drank again and again 
in different liquor-saloons before reaching a third- 
rate hotel in Greenwich Avenue, where he secured 
a room for the night. Then he went forth again, 
roaming the great town that slowly closed its 
myriad eyes as midnight drew nearer. It was 
warmer here than in Hoboken. The benches of 
Union Square were filled with tramps in various 
attitudes of somnolence ; as he passed beside their 
recumbent bodies, these and the liquid sound made 
by the playing fountain combined to pierce him 
with suggestions and reminders. He hurried out 
of the park, feeling as if he had strayed into some 
spot full of murdered dead, whose blood kept 
audibly flowing. 

Oh, the night, the night! Would it ever pass? 
He hated to go back to his room in the hotel, 


186 


A DAUGHTER OT SILENCE, 


knowing that insomnia would give him lidless eyes 
till dawn. The drink he had taken had made his 
nerves like wires of steel, but he felt that almost a 
sea of it would be needed to bring either sleep or 
stupor. An incessant craving for fresh stimulant 
had beset him, and in the region of Sixth Avenue 
between Twenty-Third and Thirty -Fourth streets 
he found large means for obtaining it. A few 
years ago this tract was paved with infamy, and to 
seek it after one o’clock in the morning was to find 
its oyster-houses and music-ludls bacchantic and 
libidinous. In a great measure drunkenness and 
harlotry have been shovelled away from these side- 
walks like unclean refuse, though stray heaps of 
them, so to speak, still remain. Allaire looked 
with indifferent eyes on the painted women who 
passed him. Presently he found himself at tlie bar 
of a saloon into which he had gained entrance 
through a side-door that furtively mocked the Ex- 
cise Law and was winked at by bribed policemen. 
For some time he took no note of anything that 
occurred within the gaudy, ornate place, though 
aware that a group of revellers had already 
gathered there. But at last something that some- 
body said made him start a little and turn toward 
the speaker. 

“ Yes, sir,” the declaration had run, “ I’ll bet I’m 
as good a judge of diamonds as there is in this 


A DAlfGHTElt OP SILEPCP. l87 

whole big town. I can tell one inside of ten 
seconds, cut or uncut.” 

“ Cut or uncut ! ” Those three little words were 
pregnant for Allaire with significance. 

“ Why shouldn’t you know all about ’em, Jo ? ” 
said a second voice . . “ You’ve been with Tiffany 
and Company for twelve years ; you ought to 
make a pretty fair diamojid-sharp by this time.” 

A laugh followed that ending sentence, and soon 
an argument as well. The man from Tiffany’s 
maintained his perfect connoisseurship, and two of 
his associates cast disrespect upon it. There was 
no quarrel, but merely harmless contention on both 
sides. To Allaire, listening, the talk seemed vitally 
personal. That he should come into such a place 
at a time like this and hear that one subject dis- 
cussed! It was beyond mere coincidence to his 
overwrt^ught and jDalpitant brain ; it was much 
moreli^ke actual miracle. 

The young gentleman from Tiffany’s had just 
made a somewhat ultra-boastful remark when he 
felt a slight touch on his sleeve. 

“ Pardoi;! me, sir,” said Allaire, “ but will you 
be good enough to tell me what is the nature of 
these two minerals ? ” 

He held out two fragments taken from the con- 
tents of Monk’s treasured chamois bag. The man 
received them, laid one on the counter, and soon 
began closely to scrutinize the other. His friends 


188 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


drew closer to him, with sidelong yet not discourt- 
eous looks at Allaire. 

A silence now ensued, during which “Jo,’’ as he 
had been called, gave searching examination to the 
stone. He felt it with the tips of his fingers, held 
it up to the light and stared severely at it, turned 
it over and over many times, rubbed it against the 
palm of his hand (an act which may or may not 
have sprung from idle ostentation) and at length 
returned it without volunteering a word. Then 
he caused the second stone to undergo similar sur- 
vey. Finally he fixed upon Allaire his small hazel 
eyes that shone sharp from a face whose natural 
pallor was perhaps a little unduly flushed by recent 
potations. 

“ They’re neither of them diamonds,” he said, as 
he handed the remaining stone back to Allaire. 

“ Not diamonds ! ” came the quick, eager an- 
swer. 

“ No, sir. They’re a crystal of some sort — 
chemically produced, I should say, and containing 
a certain amount of carbon. They’re very queer. 
I used to know something about chemistry once, 
and — ” 

“ Oh, you know something about pretty much 
everything, Jo!” cried one of his comrades, who 
was rather more flushed and vinous of appearance 
than the lapidary himself. “ How would you feel, 
now, old chap, if this gentleman was to tell you 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 1J9 

those stones were real bond fide diamonds, every 
time?” 

All eyes were levelled upon Allaire, then, but 
he drew back a little, while he slipped the two 
grayish little objects within his pocket. “ I — I 
don’t claim they’re diamonds,” he faltered, with a 
horrible sinking sense about his heart.’ “ I — I 
merely wanted to get . . to get an opinion, you 
know.” 

The walls whirled round him for a few seconds, 
and he caught the edge of the bar, as if to gain 
support. Two or three members of the group 
winked at one another. 

“ Well, come take a drink on it,” proposed a 
burly, urbane young man, plucking Allaire by the 
sleeve. “ Diamonds or no diamonds, I guess we’re 
all pretty dry.” 

“ Thank you — nothing more for me,” said Al- 
laire. 

“ Oh, come along,” proposed the late speaker.” 
“ One more won’t hurt you any. Just name 
your ” 

But he stopped short there, and his hand fell. 
Allaire had looked him full in the face, just before 
hurriedly quitting the saloon with lowered head 
and uneven gait. 

“ Good God ! ” muttered the burly man, with 
all his urbanity gone. “ What a queer, wild sort 


190 A DA UGHTER OF SILENCE 

of a stare that fellow had ! Did anybody else no- 
tice it ? ” 

“ He’s only drunk, Harry,” said a fellow-con- 
vivialist. We’ve all been there.” 

“ I think he’s more crazy than drunk,” replied 
Harry. “ Or, perhaps — ” but he ended the sen- 
tence with a little shiver in place of words. 


A DA UGHTEE OF SILENCE. 


191 


XIV, 

Once out in the night again, Allaire felt his agita- 
tion decrease. He began to discredit the state- 
ment of this self-declared expert. After all, might 
not his decision be quite worthless ? Why should it 
be held of the least moment ? There were always 
men like that, ready to nourish and tend their own 
ignorance till it blossomed into just such flimsy 
opinions. 

He would wait until to-morrow. He would 
force himself back to his hotel in Greenwich 
Avenue and try to get some rest. It would be 
worth while seeking for rest, even if sleep stayed as 
remote from him as one of those gold stars high 
above the dusky roofs. 

But he \yas mistaken ; sleep, as it turned out, 
was not so coy, after all. It came to him when he 
had flung himself, without undressing, upon the 
bed in his little dingy room ; but it did not come 
unattended. A train of demoniac dreams accom- 
panied it, from which repeatedly he started with 
dilating eyeballs and sweat-bathed body. Finally, 
at dawn he dropped into quieter slumber, and all 
the town was well astir when he awokel 

But this awakening gave him fresh anguish. 
The complete oblivion which had succeeded his 
repellent visions bad acted soothingly, and he uu- 


192 ^ DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

closed his eyes with all the unconscious innocence 
of other mornings. But like a sudden rush of black 
vapor came the realization of his crime, and shiver- 
ing, he buried his head in the pillow. 

Then reaction ensued, with stern taking of him- 
self to task for pusillanimity. He was no murderer 
— not he, indeed! Nor had he even been an ordi- 
nary robber. He had entered Monk’s room in no 
commonly burglarious way, and had found his life 
in such dire danger that he must either strike for 
it or lose it. 

Sophistries like these calmed him a little, and he 
went downstairs. Food was nauseous to him un- 
til he had drank twice at the bar of the hotel, and 
even then he gulped down with difficulty a cup of 
hot though bad coffee and swallowed like physic a 
few mouthfuls of meat and bread. After that he 
gave up his room and went out into the breezy and 
sunshiny streets. It was so delicious a day that its 
limpid and buoyant weather seemed to mock his 
misery like a pagan stare from the eyes of some 
beauteous but soulless woman. He passed two or 
three jeweller’s shops in Sixth Avenue before ven- 
turing into another of less humble appearance. 
Once inside this latter, he laid two of the stones 
before a little spectacled man with scarcely a sus- 
picion of hair on his shining head and a great cata- 
ract of it pendent from his chin. 

“ Will you please tell me whether these are of 


A DA UGBTER OF SILENCE. 


193 


any value?” he asked. The bald man with the 
huge beard spent nearly five good minutes over 
them. “ Where did you get these ? ” he suddenly 
asked, looking up at Allaire above his spectacles. 

“ I’ve, had them some time,” was the answer. 
“ They were given to me a good while ago. I 
didn’t suppose they’d be worth much, but I 
thought perhaps you might be able to tell me what 
they really are.” 

He spoke with an air of semi-indifference that 
was adroitly feigned. Meanwhile his covert watch 
upon the jeweller was intense. Just before enter- 
ing the shop he had formed this idea of how to 
act. 

“ It’s a funny kind of stone,” said the jeweller. 
“ It ought to make a nice seal-ring, if. it polishes 
well. I dare say it does.” 

“You . . you don’t think it anything like a 
diamond, then ? ” questioned Allaire. 

“ A diamond ! ” The man looked at him with a 
sudden, querying, suspicious gaze that seemed to 
say “ Are you trying to make a fool of me — or 
what?” Then he added, with a dry little rattle of 
a laugh : “ It’s about as much of a diamond as any 
pebble you’d pick up at Manhattan Beach or Long 
Branch.” 

“You’re . . you’re quite sure of that?” fell 
from Allaire’s lips, though he was not aware that 
he even spoke at all. 


13 


194 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

“ Sure? Am I sure? ” said the jeweller, now in 
undisguised mockery. “ Why, look here, young 
man ! ” He went toward a small shelf on which 
lay several watchmaker’s instruments, and quickly 
selected from these a dark, slim file. “ If this 
don’t mark the stone (and pretty quickly, too) 1 
shall be a good deal more surprised than you’ll be. 
But if it does catch on I suppose you’ll admit that 
the thing’s no more a diamond than it’s green 
cheese. Why, there never was a diamond that 
color, anyway^'' he pursued, beginning to use the 
file, and with immediate erosive effect. “ There ! ” 
he finished showing the small cut he had promptly 
produced. “ You see? It’s nothing but a rather 
softish crystal. I can’t tell you just what it is, but 
a diamond ! . . Oh, Lord ! ” And he laughed 
again, pushing both the stones toward their pos- 
sessor. 

Allaire lifted them and held them for a moment 
in the palm of one hand, with his gaze rivetted on 
their dull, rugged outlines. 

“ Then you . . you think,” he managed to say, 
“ that they’ve no value whatever? ” 

“ No,” came the answer, “i don’t want them. 
Perliaps somebody else might give you a few cents 
for them. But I guess not. They’re softer than 
I thought. I’d as lief buy two chips of an ovster- 
shell.” 

Allaire but dimly remembered leaving the shop. 


A DAUGIJTJSJB OF SILENCE. 195 

He had no further hope. He understood that he 
had steeped himself in blood to obtain the merest 
barren baubles. Monk had been a mad chemist, 
and this trash meaut his hallucination — nothing 
more. So much for the hope of lavish opulence ! 
It was dead, and ashes alone were left of it. 

His heart liad never before sank as it sank now. 
The lovely day, the clatter of vehicles, the passing 
throng of people, were all like one poignant and 
infernal jeer to him. 

A lad came shouting along, with a bundle of 
newspapers beneath one arm. What was this that 
he cried ? Something about a murder ; the word 
“ Hoboken ” clearly sounded forth on the bright, 
crisp air. Feeling in his pocket for a coin, Allaire 
hailed the lad and bought a paper. Then he 
slipped down a side street and read certain lines of 
print under mammoth-typed headings. Till now 
he had not recollected the journalistic flare that 
must follow his crime. 

But he soon realized it in full. Here it was, 
mercilessly manifest. This was not the earlier 
news of the morning, but an “extra,” published 
several hours afterward. His own name was men- 
tioned, and a strong belief prevailed that he had 
assassinated Monk. In his half-crazed flight back 
to his room he had left certain convincing signs. 

He read on, after that, with wrung heart. His 
mother — his poor, fragile mother ! — had been 


196 


DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


closely interrogated, but could give no important 
tidings of her son. She had fainted during the 
severe cross-questioning that ensued, and there 
seemed little doubt that the unhappy woman was 
nearly insane with grief and terror. 

At length the paper swam before Allaire’s eyes, 
and he cast it away. There were now moments 
when he felt fiercely tempted to go and give him- 
self up as the murderer of Monk, and again there 
were moments when he was ruled with stringency 
by the impulse of escape. After a while this latter 
mood predominated, and soon it became the un- 
varied key-note of his existence. 

His money was almost gone. He had no means 
of getting more, since the former acquaintances 
from whom he might have borrowed would have 
been startled by his very presence, even if not led 
by it to denounce him. Gradually, during the 
next week, his night-quarters became lower and 
lower. He sank into depths of whose murk he had 
thus far merely dreamed. By degrees the fear 
grew upon him of being seen in any well-known 
thoroughfare. “ They must be on my track, they 
must be, they must be,” would run dolorously 
through his brain for hours at a time. This dread 
was soon increased by a continuous sensation, ex- 
quisitely tantalizing, of a hand plaeed from behind 
on one of his shoulders. 

Walking along through the obscurest streets, he 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


197 


would suddenly pause, shiver and look backward. 
The hand would seem to remove itself when he did 
so. In this way he underwent the hunted-down 
feeling of arrest at least forty times a day. One 
by one he had pawned almost every article of his 
clothing, except that worn as outer gear. His face 
was haggard, ravaged, unshaven. He was assailed 
by an incessant craving for stimulant, and could 
now only sate it at taverns where cheap and vile 
drinks were sold. His downfall had been savagely 
quickened by circumstance ; it was like the growth 
and flowering of some noxious plant in air charged 
with tropic nutriment. A week lowered him in 
tastes and habits as a year, two years, might have 
done if circumstance had been less hostile. 
Haunts that of old were but names to him grew 
swiftly familiar ; their very filth and reek wore the 
cheer fraught with an imagined safety. He had 
not yet begged of passers in the streets, and shrank 
from such a course as repulsive ; but his money 
was fatally dwindling, and his personal resemblance 
to the lowest of waifs kept scoffing at him from 
the glass of many a shop-window. Ceaselessly he 
would brood upon the threats and risks of the 
future, and tax his brain to tell what chances of 
betterment could lie folded in its glooms. Oddly 
enough, disease and illness had no fears for him, 
and he even fitfully longed that this unaccustomed 
exposure might send him past the threshold of 


198 ^ DAliGHTEH OF SILENCE. 

some hospital, while at the same time suicide failed 
to lure him, easy an asylum as one might fancy it 
would prove for a spirit lashed by thongs of such 
persistent pain. But the truth is, suicide belongs 
to the bat-tribe of humors, and only haunts a cer- 
tain kind of mental dusk. Men kill themselves, 
not because they love life less but death more. 
Suicide is an insanity which bears on its impish 
wings the cruelty of all mortal maladies. It too 
often selects as its victim the being who has many 
reasons for avoiding it. 

His discoveries in the domain of poverty amazed 
and sickened him. He saw dens where six and 
seven human creatures would sleep at night on 
shelves nailed to rotten and reeking walls, ap- 
proached through alleys that the police knew well 
as scenes of midnight murder. He met little chil- 
dren versed in the darkest details of vice. He 
descended into cellars on streets east of lower 
Broadway, where Chinamen vended opium to 
young girls at a price whose record would recall 
the orgies of Caligula. He met mothers and 
fathers willing to barter the chastity of their 
daughters for a quart or two of whiskey or rum. 
He confronted cases of unblushing incest. The 
lees of society lay foul and gross before him. Re- 
morse was the Virgil that seemed to guide him, a 
new Dante,'^ into these tangible courts of hell, far 
more frightful than those born of mediaeval myth. 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 199 

The immense metropolis appeared to narrow about 
him and shut him within certain loathsome limits, 
as though it were the four movable walls of some 
devilish inquisitorial prison. He dared not emerge 
from the quarters into which he had shrunk. He 
slept in lodging-houses that crawled with vermin, 
and started up from his hard, malodorous bed 
every ten minutes throughout the long, hateful 
night. He felt himself growing brutalized, and 
marvelled at the lack of 'nausea with which he 
could front acts and scenes that would once have 
revolted him but to read of. And always that 
hand., which caught him by the shoulder and yet 
did not catch him by the shoulder! Always the 
spectral summons, the stealthy, conscience-born 
pursuit. 

One day in a slum that gave on Baxter Street 
he drew near an old woman who looked very worn 
and weak, yet who was dragging up the steps of 
the cellar in which she lived a huge basket of loose 
refuse, plaster and broken bricks. A memory of 
his mother swept over him as he looked into her 
wrinkled face. He took the basket from her and 
emptied it into a pile of like rubbish that cumbered 
the sidewalk a few yards away. Then he learned 
that the two subterranean rooms in which she lived 
with a sickly daughter and an old paralyzed hus- 
band were being half inundated by bushels of just 
this same abhorrent substance. They were tearing 


200 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

down the house next door, and through fissures in 
these lower walls the unwelcome stuff had kept 
pouring. No one had heeded the old woman s 
plaints. Her rent was almost nominal, and some 
of it still unpaid. Besides, the house under which 
she and hers had their pathetic lair was also 
doomed to demolition. Allaire went down with 
her, a little later, and saw the wan-faced daughter 
and the paralyzed husband, both of whom lay with 
closed e3'es and skeleton-like frames on mattresses 
mantled in rags. The old woman had for months 
resisted the missions and the aid-societies. In her 
ignorance she had a horror of them, and held them 
(perhaps with some show of reason) as agencies 
bent on dividing her from beloved kindred. Al- 
laire, after looking at the trash-clogged floors, 
turned to her and tried to make a sort of desperate 
bai-gain. 

“ See here,” he said, “ I’ll clean all this out for 
you in a day or two, if you’ll let me have a place 
to sleep. I’d like a bit now and then to eat, as 
well, if you can give it. I’ve not a cent in the 
world; I’m a castaway ; all I want is shelter, and a 
crust or so to spare if you can spare, it. There’s 
a bargain.” 

The old woman demurred, and at length con- 
sented. He went to work and spent several hours 
between then and night-time in carrying the loaded 
basket to and from the cellar. By night bis work 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 201 

was almost accomplished, and he earned a little 
wretched food and a worse bed. He was very 
tired, but slept ill. The sick girl coughed sepul- 
chrally all through the night, and her father gave 
out elfish little moans. The next day, before 
noon, and just as Allaire had got all the flotsam 
and jetsam cleared away, two or three bushels 
more fell in. The old woman now wailed and 
raved, but it was of no use. Allaire began his task 
agaiuj like a second Sysiphus. After all, he was 
not sorry that he had it to perform. The labor 
kept him from thinking, and there was a sense of 
refuge and concealment, here in this obscure street 
and this woebegone cellar, that no other surround- 
ing had yielded him. Toward afternoon two or 
three gruff-speaking though not unkindly men 
came and told the old woman that they represented 
the Inspector of Public Works ; that the building 
in a part of which she dwelt had been pronounced 
unsafe, and that as it had only one day longer to 
remain there, she would do well if she prepared to 
leave at once. This was horrible tidings. From 
lamentation the old woman lapsed into storms of 
blasphemy. An instance was now given of the 
occasional stolid and aggravating obstinacy shown 
by the poor. During the rest of that day deputies 
from charitable institutions came to her, and every 
cheering promise was given that the removal of 
those whom she held dear should be brought about 


202 A DA UGHTER OF SILENCE. 

with pitiful tenderness. But, no ; the heavens had 
conspired with man to destroy her. She would 
accept no consolation ; she and her kindred were 
being hounded to their deaths. These offers from 
the rich were all lies and humbug. Hospitals were 
slaughter-houses wliich they lured you to enter 
that they might kill you and give the doctors your 
body. So the tempest of bigotry raged for several 
hours. Afterward, when night had come, Allaire 
regretted that he was to lay his limbs for a last 
time on even so miserable a bed as the one allotted 
him. 

“ To-morrow,” he mused, lying there in the thick, 
ill-odored gloom, “ to-morrow I must begin my 
wanderings again, and without a ray of hope as to 
how they will end ... If she could and would help 
me ! If I only dared write her ! If I only dared 
trust her enough to write her ! ” 

It was Brenda of whom he thus mused. Again 
and again he had resolved to seek her help, but al- 
ways the chilling doubt would meet him : “After 
what has happened between you, would she not 
answer your most despairing entreaties with con- 
tempt? ” 

Once more to-night he was very tired, and yet 
could not sleep. Was it the earthy and rancid 
smell of the place in which he lay? Was it the 
raucous cough of the sick girl, or the bleak, thin 
moan of the paralytic? No, neither of these. It 


A DAUGITTJSR SILENCE. 203 

was that hand of air, stealing, yet not stealing, be- 
low the tattered bedclothes. It was fancy, always 
morbid with him, that told of how somewhere waited 
the rope that would choke him, somewhere the 
beams were piled that would shape his scaffold. 
He bad read the papers, day after day, and had 
learned from them that detectives were on his track. 
Thus far his safety had lain in not leaving the 
limits of the town. No one doubted his guilt. 
He had evidently clambered into Monk’s room, and 
had stolen something from the half-shattered chest. 

A damnable proof had been found against him 
in a small wallet which bore two or three letters 
inscribed with his name, and which had fallen from 
his pocket in the bloody scuffle. His conviction 
was held to be a certainty when he should under- 
go arrest. And yet he still hoped. To stay here 
in these grim purlieus of poverty might lead at 
length to a lost scent, an abandoned quest. Other 
men had escaped foes that hotly dogged them — 
why should not he ? 

Then, while he brooded in the darkness- that was 
feebly starred by a low-turned lamp, there came 
over him an immense weariness. After all, was 
escape worth trying for ? Would this dull, eating 
fear ever take its pang from his future life ? 
Suppose he triumphed and got away. Would 
peace ever visit his soul again, though thousands 
of miles were to sunder him from that little attic 


204 -4 B AUGHT ER OF SILENCE. 

chamber ill Hoboken? Would not both repent- 
ance and alarm forever slip between himself and 
the sunshine, like tenuous and delicate veils of 
crape ? Would life be at all worth living ? Would 
that hand ever cease from troubling him ? 

He soon sank into a fluttered doze, from which 
he woke with a horrible start. What noise was 
that ? He had dreamed that he saw them nailing 
his scaffold in a prison-yard under a slaty, driz- 
zling sky, and now the sounds of their hammers 
appeared to break definite and actual upon his 
ears. He sat up in bed. A figure was moving 
toward the outer door. With it moved also the 
lamp ; its head was bowed and its gait shambling 
... it surely must be the old woman. Mean- 
while the knocking, off beyond there, grew into a 
series of savage pounds. 

“ Oh, coming, com — ing ! ” cried a voice that 
past all doubt was the old woman’s. And then 
oaths were grumbled, and the light was wholly 
shut from view behind an out- jutting angle. 

He waited. Voices were quite plain to him, 
now ; one or two of them had the ring of men’s 
deeper tones. He could not catch a word that 
they said. But presently they di-ew nearer, 
and then he heard. His heart shot up into his 
throat. There was a cold spot on his shoulder, as 
if a hand of ice had been laid there. Ho could feel 
the palm of such a hand, its inner bones, and count 


A DAUGHTFB OF SILENCE. 205 

every separate chill of its fingers against his flesh. 

There was no doubt, now. They wanted him ; 
they had come to get him. Here in this under- 
ground hovel they had indeed run him to earth. 

“ I don’t believe he’s th’right ’un a bit,” the 
old woman was testily declaring. She approached 
with the lamp, and in another minute its rays had 
smitten him full upon the face. 

He sat motionless. A man with a lean, shrewd, 
but not ungentle face came up to him. In the 
dusk of the background were other forms. 

It seemed to Allaire that the man placed his 
own hand exactly where that frigid impress had 
already been. 

“ I’m looking for Ralph Allaire,” he said. “ Are 
you that person ? ” 

There was a pause, and then came the low but 
clear answer: 

“ Yes. I’m Ralph Allaire.” 

So it had ended this way, after all ! He felt a 
strange, almost exhilarating joy as he looked up in 
to the officer’s face and added : 

“Thank God you’ve got me! I believe three 
days more of this hell would have made me go and 
give myself up I ’’ 


206 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 


XV. 

Miss Gabriella, clad in mourning-robes that 
gave her stout figure a more ladylike look than 
when she had worn gayer gear, stepped across the 
threshold of the little parlor with a would-be cheer- 
ful air, and greeted Guy Arbuthnot, who rose, 
anxious-eyed, on her appearance. 

“ Good-morning,” he said, putting out his hand. 
And before she could respond he went hurriedly 
on : “ How is Brenda feeling to-day ? ” 

“ Better — decidedly better,” said Miss Gabriella. 
“ That sense of utter prostration has gone, and she 
holds her head up with some sort of likeness to her 
old self.” 

“ You mean that I shall really be enabled to see 
her ? ” flurriedly questioned Guy. 

“ Yes; she will be downstairs in a little while.” 

A look of delight flashed across his handsome 
features, but left behind it, in another moment, 
gravity, if not positive sadness. 

“How ill she must have been ! ” he murmured. 

“We can hardly wonder at it,” sighed Miss 
Gabriella. “ I don’t know what saved me. The 
shock that I received was worse than hers, most 
certainly.” 

“ Oh, it wasn’t that with her,” broke out Guy. 


A DA UGHTER OF SILENCE. 


207 


Then he flushed a little, and seemed slightly embar- 
rassed. 

His companion stared at him. You don’t 
think,” she asked, “ that Brenda was made ill by 
the blow of her father’s frightful death? Why, 
you astonish me ! ” 

Guy began nervously to throw from one gloved 
hand to another the cane which he had brought into 
the room with him. 

“ I suppose I’m wrong, then, if you’re so certain 
about it,” he said. “ Still, my full meaning was 
merely this : that no immediate effect was pro- 
duced on Brenda’s health by her father’s dreadful 
death . She bore that, and she bore your own com- 
plete collapse there at the beginning, almost with 
calmness.” 

“ True.” 

“ It was afterward that she became so ill.” 

‘‘Yes; at the funeral, you know, she showed signs 
of breaking completely down. Ah,” continued 
Miss Gabriella, with decision, “ her case has been 
like many another. She bore up until all was near- 
ly over, and then came the reaction.”! 

Guy remained silent, with downcast eyes. After 
watching him intently, and a little puzzledly. 
Miss Gabriella again said : 

“ Have you any feeling that this may be a wrong 
view of the matter? ” 

“ A wrong view ? ” he repeated, looking quickly 


208 A UGHTER OF SILENCE. 

up. “ No, no. It seems the only sensible one to 
take.” 

M. . . yes,” came the dry-toned answer. 

“ I fancied you might think the criminality of 
Ralph Allaire had perhaps ” 

“ Why, how should that affect her ? ” shot in Guy, 
almost before he might have been supposed to sur- 
mise the end of the sentence. “ They were never 
more than just ordinary friends . . am I not right? ” 

“ Oh, yes — yes, indeed ! ” 

“ And yet you think tlie knowledge that he killed 
her father could affect her more than the death of 
that father himself ? ” 

“ By no means,” denied Miss Gabriella. “ But 
it occurred to me that you might believe tliis.” 

“ Why, pray ? ” 

“ Oh, you lovers are so jealous.” 

“Jealous ! ” he said, in a sort of reluctant whisper, 
as though he abhorred the word. “ I hope Brenda 
has never found me that.” 

Miss Gabriella put both hands together with vehe- 
mence and let her head droop sideways. “ Neither 
she nor I ever found you anything but the soul of 
goodness and generosity, Guy ! You’ve done so 
much for us ! ” 

“ Don’t speak of it.” 

Miss Gabriella’s voice broke and her eyes filled. 
“ I — I can’t help but speak of it ! What would the 
funeral have been but for you ? Why, almost pan- 


A DAVGRTUB OF SILENCE. 209 

per-like, instead of the finely respectable one you 
made it, Guy ! It was worthy of my poor brother 
— of the once brilliant and popular physician who 
moved among the very most select circles of Wash- 
ington ! ” 

Not long afterward Brenda made her appearance, 
to the great joy and relief of her lover. Guy felt 
like falling at her feet and kissing them as he noted 
how pale she was. “ But you are better, you are 
better,” he said, again and again, while he held her 
hand and stroked it. 

“ Yes,” she would sometimes answer ; and some- 
times she would say nothing. 

“ You would not let me come in and see you while 
you were ill ! ” he reproached her. “You can’t 
think of the deprivation — ah, no, indeed you can 
not ! If you had loved me, really loved me . . . 
But I won’t vex you with rebukes ; I’ll simply be 
grateful that you’re at last restored to me. And 
are you quite yourself again ? Are you now en- 
tirely out of pain ? 

“I had no pain,” said Brenda. “It was only a 
great weakness and exhaustion.” 

“ Poor child — poor darling ! and it has gone, 
now ? ” 

“ Yes . . or nearly.” 

“ I’ve been screwing up my courage, Brenda,” 
he began, after a slight pause. “ It’s in the way 
of making you a proposition ! ” 


210 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE- 


“ A proposition ? ” 

“ It’s about our marriage. I want very much 
that we should be married quietly and immediately 
. . . why do you start so ? ” 

“ Did I start ? ” she said. 

“ Suppose we say two or three days from now, 
Brenda ? My mother would come over to one of 
the little churches here. We could escape all 
flourish and parade in that way ; your deep mourn- 
ing would be a full excuse for so private a ceremony 
— if one were needed. But none is needed, of 
course. It would be a short cut to happiness for 
me . . . Don’t you think, my love, that you could be 
induced to take it with me ? ” 

“ Such a little time,” she murmured. He 
watched her eagerly, as if hoping she would say 
more. But the old silence had folded her in its 
familiar spell. 

“ Oh, Brenda,” he pleaded ; “ do you mind that 
it is such a little time ? Do you speak like this be- 
cause of any wish that there should be delay ? ” 

“ I — I don’t wish that there should be so much 
haste,” she answered. “ Perhaps a fortnight from 
now. : . ” 

“ A fortnight ! ” he broke in as she hesitated. 
“ Well, then, let it be that. I’m satisfied.” His 
eyes sparkled; he stooped and covered both her 
hands with kisses. “ I’ll hold you to the contract, 
remember ! ” And then there flowed from his lips 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 


211 


many words of so impassioned a quality that to 
write them down would make indeed a chronicle 
of transport. 

That evening he went home with a brighter 
mien than his mother or Agatha had seen him 
wear since the tragedy of Monk’s lurid death. 
This event had thrilled both ladies with horror. 
Mrs. Arbuthnot had tortured herself by two trips 
across the river, one before the funeral and one 
when it took place. Agatha, dismayed and sad- 
dened, had striven to show Guy every mark of 
sympathy. You would have said that she not 
only repented her little outburst of accusation 
against Brenda, but that she had drowned all dis- 
approval of the engagement in huniane regrets 
that one whom he loved should have been thus 
woefully bereaved. When Brenda’s illness be- 
came known to herself and her aunt she urged the 
latter to pay a third visit at the little Hoboken 
house. But Mrs. Arbuthnot concluded negatively. 

“ If I should go and see the girl,” she said, “ it 
would be only at Guy’s request or her own. I’m 
willing to do my duty, but you doubtless know by 
this time that where civil treatment of Brenda 
Monk is concerned it is duty shorn of all pleasure.” 

“You could never be really uncivil to anyone if 
you tried,” said Agatha. 

“ I should like to begin trying in her direction,” 
said Mrs. Arbuthnot, 


212 


A JDAirGRTJSB OF SILENCE. 


“Ah, you’re too fond of your son for that ! ” 

“ Well, I’ll do what Guy tells me to do. I’ll take 
her over a bushel of flowers, or a bushel of fruit, if 
he so counsels. And if he says nothing on the 
subject of my going I shall stay at home.” 

Guy said something, very soon after this, on a 
subject that was wholly unexpected — his near 
approaching private marriage with Brenda. His 
mother turned a little paler when she heard the 
news, and stole a glance at Agatha, who chanced 
to be present. But Agatha averted her eyes just 
in time to make it seem as if the look had been 
quite lost upon her. 

“ Brenda is better, then, is she? ” said Mrs. Ar- 
buthnot, scarcely knowing that the words left her 
lips. 

“ Yes, much better,” said Guy. “ Able to marry 
me — in a cosy, private little way, at least,” he 
gaily added. And then his gaze drifted toward 
Agatha, and it somehow chanced that their eyes 
met. 

An odd, defiant blithesomeness lit the girl’s face. 
“ If I’m invited to the wedding,” she said, “ I shall 
insist on going as a solitary bridesmaid. I hope 
you’ve no objection, Guy ? ” 

“None in the world,” he replied, suspecting her 
mirth, from force of ancient habit. “ You and the 
bride shall each have the handsomest bouquet I 
can manage to get hold ofl,” 


A DAlfGHTJSn OF SILENCF. 213 

“ Thanks,” returned Agatha. “ But they must 
not be quite the same. Let Brenda’s be white, 
with an orchid or two. I’ll take red roses, if you 
please. They suit my complexion better, not to 
mention their symbol of my warm congratulations.” 

“ Oh, are they so warm, then ? ” said Guy, with 
uneasy and perplexed accent. “ And yours, 
mother ? ” he went on, with a slight, self-conscious 
veer of the head, “ what shall they be ? ” 

“ My congratulations ? ” replied Mrs. Arbuthnot. 
“ Are you asking me if they will be warm ? ” 

“No ; I spoke of your bouquet.” 

Mrs. Arbuthnot smiled faintly. “ My son,” she 
said, with a little quiver in her voice, “ let me 
have the same flowers that Agatha shall carry. I 
don’t wish her to outdo me in cheerfulness.” 

“ I’ll give you a bunch of heartsease,” said Guy, 
“if you’ll agree not to find it inappropriate.”. 

“ But it will be,” objected Agatha, with a sudden 
non-commital demureness. “ Heartsease has too 
strong a flavor of resignation.” 

Guy bit his lip. “ Perhaps, then,” he said, “ you 
would hold that such a nosegay might be better 
suited to the bride.” 

“ How can I judge ? ” said Agatha, with a shrug 
of the shoulders. “ I’ve scarcely more than seen 
the girl you’re going to marry.” 

“ And yet you judged not long ago I ” exclaimed 
Guy. “ Ah, you are inconsistent ! ” 


214 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

“ Say merciful, Guy ! ” exclaimed his mother. 

“ Merciful, merciful ? ” he repeated. “ I don’t 
like the word.” Addressing Agatha solely, he 
pursued : “ Have you concluded to pity Brenda, 
after having so heartily disapproved of her ? ” 

“No,” Agatha returned, reddening somewhat, 
but in rather a proud way. “I have simply 
concluded to behave with justice.” 

“ Ah,” said Guy, throwing a sidelong look at 
his mother, “ justice has this advantage over 
mercy : it is less patronizing. . . Well,” he went on, 
with a smile at Agatha which may have seemed to 
her inmost heart almost as cold as a sword, “ I 
must felicitate you on having deserted the clairvoy- 
ant attitude; it is so apt to mislead the sibyl 
herself, no less than her listeners,” 

This allusion to the impetuous words that she 
had spoken on the evening when Brenda had 
dined with her aunt, carried a sting of irony 
which Agatha may have felt that she deserved ; 
for although retort was never a difficult affair with 
her, she now paid back none whatever, but suf- 
fered Guy’s wounding adjective, “ clairvoyant,” to 
pass unchallenged. Perhaps if she could now 
have been more keenly clear-visioned in the case 
of his promised wife, she might have found herself 
confronted by a mental picture whose tinges would 
have terrified her. 

Brenda had gone upstairs to her room, that same 


A DAUGIITjEB of silence. 215 

day, after Guy took leave of her, and begun to 
dress for the street. Her aunt appeared at the 
half-open door while she was thus occupied, and 
gave an astonished cry. 

“ You’re not going out, Brenda ! ” 

“ Why not ?” was the answer. 

“ You’ve been so forlorn.” 

“ I’m better, as you know.” 

“ But it’s yet too soon for you to trifle with 
yourself.” 

“ I don’t see that I’m doing so.” 

“ Tlie weather is horridly cold and dismal, 
Brenda. I do hope you’re not going far.” 

“No; not very.” 

“ Let me go with you, then.” 

“ Thank you ; I prefer you shouldn’t.” 

Brenda soon quitted the house in her sombre 
mourning, and went directly to the home of Mrs. 
Allaire. In spite of illness she had seen a certain 
newspaper every da3^ It had told her that Ralph 
Allaire was still uncaptured, and that his mother 
had of late shown an energy and vigor quite dis- 
proportionate to her former enfeebled state. On 
this account she scarcely felt surprise when a 
small, black-clad figure presented itself in answer 
to her knock at the upstairs door of the well- 
known lodgings. 

Mrs. Allaire’s bony face was perfectly bloodless. 


216 


A DAUGBTEB OF SILENCE. 


and her dark eyes burned from it with a hungry 
dullness. 

“ Ah, it’s you ! ” she said, recoiling a little as 
she perceived Brenda. “ I — I didn’t expect this. 
I didn’t, indeed ! ” And she stood with her white, 
fleshless little hands raised in piteous alarm. 

“ Sit down,” said Brenda, while she softly 
closed the door behind her. “ You don’t look as 
if you ought to be up and about like this.” 

Mrs. Allaire shook her head, with a fleeting and 
woe-fraught smile. “ I’m stronger than I was,” 
she murmured. “ I dare say it won’t last. But I 
can’t lie still in bed as I did. I’m always waiting 
for him ; I’m always hearing his step.” 

“ Yes, of course ; I know,” said Brenda, with 
the words leaving her lips as though she made 
them thus curt because of some inward turmoil 
that she wished to conceal. “ Now, sit down ; do 
sit down. There . . and she gently pushed the lit- 
tle skeleton of a body into the first chair on which 
her eye lit. “ I’ll sit down here beside you. You 
—you say you’re waiting for him.'' She had 
dropped her voice into almost a whisper, now. 
“ Have you any knowledge of where he is ? ” 

“ No ; none.” 

Brenda looked at her with a sudden skeptical 
poise of the head. “ Don’t you trust me ? ” she 
asked. 

“ I don’t distrust you,” answered the wan, elfish 


A LAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 217 

little creature. “ I — I hardly know much about 
you.” 

“ Don’t you know that I used to be quite — 
well, quite friendly with him f ” 

“ Yes. I remember that. He told me once — 
’twasn’t so very long ago, either — that you’d got 
engaged to some rich gentleman over in the city.” 

“ Did he tell you ? It’s true.” She looked 
very steadily into the slim, chalky face, at this 
point. “ It’s true,” she repeated. “ I’ve got 
money, now. I could help you if you’d let me.” 

“ Help me — youT'* quivered the frail being. 
“ You, of everybody else on earth ! ” 

“ Never mind that,” sped Brenda, with so vola- 
tile and headlong an air that the effect was almost 
one of transformation. “ I don’t mean that I’ve 
much money ; I wouldn’t take much until we 
were married. But aunt and I had to get it 
somehow, after that awful thing happened. There 
wasn’t enough to pay for the funeral.” 

“ The funeral ! ” echoed Brenda’s hearer, in an 
affrighted, dubious way. It may have been that 
she used the two words without much thought of 
their meaning, and that they merel}'’ signified the 
depth and turbulence of her pain. 

“ Now, tell me,” continued Brenda, leaning 
closer to her companion and making it seem 
strange that they should both be women, since 
one was of so splendidly healthful a mould, and 


218 ^ DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

one so wizened, colorless and shattered — “ tell me, 
please, whether I can’t lend you some of my 
savings. It will make no difference to me whether 
you pay me back this year or next, or the year 
after. Mr. Arbuthnot is veiy rich; I shall never 
need the money again ; I’ve promised to marry 
him very quietly in two weeks from now. So you 
see — ” 

“ Oh, I don’t want your money, or his ! ” broke 
in the poor, trembling woman. “ My — my neigh- 
bors are quite kind for the present, though I can’t 
say how long they will keep so. But ^oii ! ” And 
she drew back, with anguish and dismay meeting 
in her bleared, wistful eyes. “Why, there have 
been times when I’ve lain awake in bed, shivering 
to think how near me you were — you, the daugh- 
ter of the man he killed ! And now you come to 
me with an offer of help ! Ah, you must be a 
saint indeed ! ” 

“ I’m no saint,” said Brenda ; and as she spoke a 
light wave of rosy color flew over her face. 

“ You must be— you must ! ” persisted the other. 
“ You’re as good as you are beautiful. I never 
thought it of you till now. Not that I thought 
you wicked. But you seemed to me careless about 
other people — not to mind whether they suffered 
or no. Still, I’d seen you so seldom, hadn’t I? 
Three or four times you came in with him and sat 
by my bed. But you never held my hand, or any- 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 219 

thing like that . . . And yet you’re fine and strong 
enough to do this thing.” She caught Brenda’s 
sleeve with her lamentable little claw-like hand. 
“ Oh, God bless you for it ! God bless you for it ! ” 
she hurried on. “ Perhaps it means you’ve got 
some pity for him, and that’s such a relief to me ! 
Everybody seems to hate him so. It makes the 
kindness that people show me almost as bitter, 
sometimes, as though they were cruel.” 

“ I’ve great pity for him,” said Brenda. 

The woman looked at her in an awed way. 
“ You have great pity ! ” she breathed, as if trying 
to make her mind more familiar with tidings that 
were so phenomenal. 

“ Yes,” averred Brenda, “ and I would give 
him, now at this moment, all the aid in my power. 
Don’t distrust me.” 

“ I do not. No — be sure that I do not.” 

“ Then tell me what message he has sent you. 
I’m sure he must have sent you some message.” 

“ No — none. I’ve never seen him since that 
night. He came to my bedside, and — ” 

“ I saw what you told the newspaper people,” 
Brenda broke in. “Was that all quite true? I 
shouldn’t blame you if you confessed to rne that it 
wasn’t ; and oh, believe me, every word you might 
choose to speak in my hearing would be kept as 
the most sacred of secrets ! He . . he did kill my 
father, perhaps, but . . 


220 A DAVGHT^ii OF SILENCF. 

“ Perhaps ! ” rang the faint, thin cry from those 
hueless lips of her auditor. “ Oh, can there be 
any doubt. Miss Monk ? Can there be ? ” 

“ I think there cannot possibly be.” 

“ Ah, but he was no thief, as they try now to 
make it out that he was ! ” wailed Mrs. Allaire. 
“ You must feel that ! ” 

“ I don’t only feel it,” said Brenda, with a soft 
yet terrible solemnity. “ I am certain of it through 
my reason — through my knowledge of . . of what 
your son really was.” 

“ Ah ! It’s such joy to hear that from some- 
body!” 

The faded eyes into which Brenda was gazing 
had thus far looked not only as if tears had scalded 
them into dimness, but as if they had wept until 
their dearth of tears had grown a life-long future 
poverty. But now they brimmed with the new 
moist evidence of heart-wrung fervor. 

“ A thief — he ! ” said Brenda, while her lip mo- 
mentarily curled. “ And then what had my father 
that any common thief might wish to steal? ” 

“ Right — right ! ” gasped her companion. “ What 
was it that took him there ? Why did he climb 
that vine? It’s been to me like a queer, pell-mell 
dream ever since I heard it — except for the awful 
reality of their wanting him and hunting him as 
they’re doing ! ” 

Brenda spoke with a semblance of her old slow- 


A DAUGHmB OF SILENCE. 


221 


ness now, yet with not a trace of the unconcern 
that often marked it. “ There was something he 
wanted in that chest he broke — something he 
knew my father would not give him. It may 
have been the result of some discovery — or fan- 
cied discovery — my father had made. No doubt 
they had talked together, and Ralph — ^your son — 
had believed a great treasure lay hid there. 
But my father was mad, and whether the sup- 
posed prize were a packet of written papers, or 
a bottle of some boasted elixir, or a collection of 
quaint crystals he had made by his chemical dab- 
blings and potterings, I can’t tell, I can’t tell! He 
was always doing secret things behind a door that 
he often kept locked. We didn’t intrude much 
upon him ; we never held it to be worth while. 
We knew he was out of his head — harmlessly so — 
and when he dropped hints about wealth coming 
to us through his labors, it was like the babble of a 
child in our ears. But Ra — ^your son, may have 
thought it different. He may have burned to see 
what was in the chest. Perhaps he had made sure 
that father had gone out that night with Aunt Ga- 
briella. Being surprised in the room afterward, 
he may have defended himself as best he could. 
Father had a knife somewhere concealed in that 
room. I never saw it myself, but once Aunt 
Gabriella did . . . Ah, you’re trembling so I ” 


222 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

Brenda broke off. “ I’ve been taxing your strength 
unmercifully.” 

“ No ; it isn’t that. You — you mentioned a 
knife. You said I distrusted you . . You said it 
twice. But you were wrong. Do you know, it’s 
clear to me, now, why you came here ? I somehow 
read it in your face as you were just speaking. 
You may be going to marry the finest and richest 
gentleman in a fortnight, but for all that, you ” 

“ Hush; don’t say it; don’t even fancy it. I 
came because I was sorry for you — because I un- 
derstood how fearful must be your suffering. I’m 
glad if you truly have faith in me, for that will 
make it all the easier to tell me everything.” 

“ Everything ? ” 

“ Yes. Is there not something you haven’t yet 
told? ” 

“ I — I didn’t mean it should ever — ever be told,” 
the white lips began to stammer. “ If — if he’s 
found, it would make matters even worse for him 
than they are now.” 

“ They could not be much worse than they are 
now,” said Brenda, with a dismal dryness. “What 
have you to tell? I should be silent about it — I 
should be silent as the grave. Don’t you believe 
this?” 

“ Yes ; I believe it — I’m sure of it.” 

“ Then speak frankly,” said the girl. 

Mrs. Allaire clutched her sleeve with both hands. 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 223 

Brenda felt as if the claws of some weak fluttering 
bird clung there. 

“ I will speak frankly. It’s the — the knife he 
left.” 

“ The knife ? ” 

“ I found it. I rose from my bed, that night, 
after he’d gone. He’d burned his clothes in the 
stove — the clothes he wore, when. . .” 

“ Yes, I know ; go on.” 

“ There was the smell. I tried to destroy that — 
and I did away with the ashes he’d left. I’d no 
knowledge of the blood-marks. My eyes are dim, 
and I saw none. But I saw another thing — a knife. 
It was stained with — with dark-red blotches. I 
washed those off.” 

“ And you hid the knife ? ” 

“ Yes. And oh. Miss Monk, it’s been such a hor- 
rible weight on me ever since ! ” 

“ Why didn’t you destroy it? ” 

“Destroy it? So I would have done — so I 
ought to have done . . . if . . . if . . .” 

“ If what ? Say it calmly. Say it, if you can, 
without shaking so.” 

“ The knife was so strong and big that I couldn’t 
break it. And even if I had done that, the pieces 
might have been found as proof against him. For 
every day people come here — I sometimes think 
the house is always watched. And ever so many 
times I’ve thought I might be well enough to leave 


224 ^ baughteh of silence. 

these rooms — to go down beside the river and take 
my chance of — of throwing the hateful thing in 
while no one was looking. But I’ve never had the 
strength to do so — never yet ! Oh, if you would 
only help me ! Would it be too much for me to 
ask of you ? Only a little while ago you were the 
last being in all the world I — I would have asked ! ” 

“ Never mind that,” said Brenda. “ Get the 
knife from its hiding-place and give it to me.” 

“You’ll — ^you’ll drop it into the river?” came 
the eagfer query. 

“ If I can.” 

“ Or, anyway. . . anyway. . . you’ll bury it some- 
where ? ” 

“Yes. I promise you that. I promise with all 
my soul.” 


A DAirGHTJSJi OF SILENCE. 


225 


XVI. 

On the morning after Brenda’s visit to Mrs. Al- 
laire, the newspapers all bristled with announce- 
ments that Theodore Monk’s assassin had been 
captured. Guy reached the home of his sweetheart 
that same afternoon. Brenda herself 'opened the 
door for him ; their one servant was not always 
prepared to fulfill this task. 

“ You’ve heard ? ” he said, as he caught her hand 
and drew her into the little parlor whose plainness 
and primness had already acquired for him the 
sanctity of a shrine. 

“Yes, I’ve heard,” she answered. 

He kissed her, and then tenderly forced her into 
a seat at his side on one of the hair-cloth sofas. 
“ And you’re glad, of course. You must be.” 

“ Grlad ? ” she repeated vaguely. 

“ Yes. Why not? Of course he’ll soon be tried, 
and the trial will soon come on.” 

“Will it?” 

“ Oh, yes. Popular indignation is so roused.” 

“ I suppose it is.” 

He watched her intently, for a moment. “ It 
was a most dastardly murder, and the evidence 
against him doesn’t admit of a doubt. No wonder 
he’s confessed.” 


15 


226 ^ DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

“Confessed?” she echoed, with a great start. 
“ Who told you that ? ” 

“ It’s the latest news. The extras are giving it 
now.” 

“ What does he say ? ” 

“ Oh, that he killed your father in self-defence, 
which is naturally the merest brazen lying.” 

“ It may not be.” 

Guy dropped her hand as she spoke those words. 
“ Brenda ! ” he exclaimed, in shocked voice. “ You 
don’t mean that he tells the truth ? ” 

“ Perhaps he does.” 

“ But he entered this house as a thief — a mean, 
rascally thief ! ” returned Guy, with clouding face. 

“Does he say that he did? ” 

Guy stared at her. “ Sa^ it ! Why, yes, in so 
many words. He doesn’t state what he came to 
steal, but his very silence on that point makes his 
guilt all the surer.” 

Brenda sat mute and low-lidded for a short while. 
Then she lifted her eyes and said softly : 

Does he speak of the weapon he used ? ” 

“ The weapon ? ” 

“ Yes. Where he got it, I mean.” 

“ Not that I recall. Doubtless he brought it 
with him.” 

“ I think he did not bring it with him,” she said. 

“ How is that ? ” quickly inquired Guy. “ Your 


A DA UGHTEli OF SILENCE. 


227 


father had it in his room, you believe, on the night 
of his deatli ? ” 

Yes.” 

“That may account for Allaire’s declaration 
about self-defense. But, fortunately, the fact of 
his having gone thither to murder or not to mur- 
der will have no effect on his sentence. He will 
swing for his crime, just the same.” 

Brenda swept her eyes troublously, if not angrily, 
over Guy’s face. “ Ah, you’re cruel I ” she said. 

“ Cruel?” 

“Yes — yes,” ran her next fleet and emphatic 
words. “ How do you know what provocation my 
father may have given him.” 

“ Provocation ! ” broke from Guy. “ Good 
Heavens, you’re speaking of your father’s mur- 
derer ! ” 

“ I know it. But you speak as if there were no 
degrees in crime.” 

“Of course there are degrees. Allaire’s is one 
of the lowest. He went into a room as a thief, 
and — ” 

“ How do you know he went there as a thief ? ” 
she challenged. 

“ How . . do . . I . . know ? ” he iterated, in 
amazement. “ Why, the smashed chest proves it, 
if nothing else.” Here Guy began to gnaw his lips. 
“ It looks, Brenda,” he proceeded, “ as if you were 
bent on almost excusing that wretch.” 


22 $ ^ DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

“ I want to give him his due,” she said firmly ; 
“ no more, and no less.” 

“Ah,” laughed Guy, with a most uiihabitual 
cynic inflection, “ he will be sure to get his due. 
They’ll pay it him in good stout hemp ! ” 

“How you hate him,” she muttered, under her 
breath. 

“ I hate him because he killed your father,” Guy 
answered, and in his voice woke a stress which clad 
the reply with strong rebuke. But Brenda, if she 
felt this, flung off its influence. 

“ Pall ! ” she retorted ; “ you scarcely knew my 
father.” 

Guy gave an exclamation of pain, and sprang to 
his feet. “ Brenda ! ” lie protested, “ it revolts me 
when I see you sympathize with that rulflan. It is 
so horribly unnatural in you.” 

“ Have I shown sympathy with him ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t know what you call it ! I’m some- 
times led to think — ” he paused with great abrupt- 
ness and looked at her excitedly. 

“Well,” she said, with a somewhat imperious 
intonation, “what are you sometimes led to 
think?” 

“ Never mind. . . I — I don’t want to seem hard 
or cross, Brenda, but really it hurts me not to 
find you loathing, execrating, such a viper as that 
Allaire.” 


A DA UGIlTDll OF SILENCE. 


229 


“ I might loathe his deed and not him,” she replied. 
“ There’s a difference.” 

“ Hardly any.” 

“ I knew him ; you didn’t.” 

“ True. I am inclined to guess,” affirmed Guy 
i-ather sternly, “ that you knew him very well.” 

“We were once friends.” 

“ Intimate friends, perhaps.” 

“I saw him quite often.” 

“ I can’t forget,” said Guy, “ the afternoon that 
I first spoke to you in the park yonder. He was 
insolent to me then, and I overlooked it— I chose 
to overlook it. You remember? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ His presumption then seemed to me, Brenda, 
based upon a close acquaintanceship with yourself. 
If it had not been, as I recall telling my own 
thoughts, you would have resented it more than 
you did. Still, all that is past; let it remain so. 
He’s gone out of your life, whatever was the charm, 
faint or distinct, that he may have exerted upon it. 
You’ll never see him again, thank God, and ” 

“Never see him again ? ” she interrupted, with a 
sudden defiance and ire. “ If I choose — and per- 
haps I shall choose — I may see him again.” 

Guy visibly strove to control himself. “ Brenda.” 
he replied, after a little pause, “ do you mean that 
you would be willing to visit him there in his 
prison ? ” 


230 


A daugiiti:b of silence. 


“ Yes,*’ she said. The next instant she rose, her 
face fixed as though cut from some sort of dim- 
tinted stone. “ I would be willing, and I may go 
any day to the county-jail where he’s now confined.” 

Guy bowed his head for a second or two and 
then lifted it. “ Oh, Brenda ! ” he burst forth, with 
a wrath held in leash by melancholy, “you would 
put this disgrace upon yourself — upon me ! ” 

She made a slight, disdaining gesture with one 
hand. “ I’ve been frank. I might have deceived 
you. If you think it a disgrace you’ve but one 
thing to do.” 

His eyes flashed. “ I’ll do that thing,” he cried. 
“ I’ll never speak to you again.” 

“Very well,” she returned, walking toward the 
door. “ Good-bye.” 

“ Brenda! ” he called, hurrying after her. “ Do 
you mean what you say ? ” 

She turned, facing him, but without the least 
sign of discomposure. “I will go to see Ralph 
Allaire, now. Neither you nor any one shall pre- 
vent me. Understand — I’ve said it, and I’ll keep 
my word. So, once and for all, we’re strangers to 
each other.” 

As she again turned, Guy clenched both his 
hands and raised them, strained into tense knots, 
toward his breast. “ Bj- Heaven,” he answered, 
“ we are strangers, from this hour ! ” 

Soon afterward he left the room that she had 
quitted, and thence hastened from the house. 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


231 


XVII. 

“ You’ve told me enough, Brenda,” said Miss 
Gabriella, with dolor and affright in her tones, “ to 
make me certain you were completely wrong ! ” 

“ That is what I expected you would say,” was 
Brenda’s reply. 

“ And so it’s broken off ! ” wailed her aunt. 
“ What is to become of us ? ” “ How are we to 

live ? The future for both of us has turned the 
most horrifying blank. We’ve no money to speak 
of, and you know it. If his help is taken from us 
we sink . . sink. Oh, it’s too terrible ! And for 
ou to let it happen merely because you insisted 
on doing something in every way scandalous ! ” 

“ Well, it has happened,” said Brenda, with her 
most repressed and colorless demeanor. 

Miss Gabriella appeared to recognize in her 
niece the old indifferent dullness. As if to show 
her special dislike of it at the present moment, she 
flung up both hands with a groan that was almost 
bellowing in its volume, and staggered toward a 
sofa. Brenda watched her with silence while she 
buried her head amid the cushion and let her palms 
beat the air in a flapping, hysterical fashion. But 
at length the girl spoke, each word that she pro- 
nounced having somehow the effect of a dropped 
stone. 


‘232 A JJAUGBTEB OF SILENCE. 

“ We may not sink, after all, quite so low as you 
imagine. I’m willing, for my part, to do my share 
of work. I dare say there may be some chance 
for two willing women like ourselves. At least, I 
feel brave enough now. The mood may alter with 
me in no time, and then will come that heavy- 
hearted sensation which is death to courage. If I 
fight it and win, all the better. If I don’t fight it 
and let it crush me, you’ll be to blame.” 

She passed at once from the room, and Miss 
Gabriella, who had caught every word which she 
had uttered, now slowly rose from the sofa. There 
had always been a deep well of humanity hid be- 
low the tangle of eccentricities possessed by Bren- 
da’s aunt. Some of her niece’s recent words kept 
echoing in her ears with a mournful continuance. 
“ ‘ If I don’t fight it, and let it crush me,’ ” Miss 
Gabriella now murmured half aloud to herself. . 
What had Brenda meant by that? Surely she had 
never dreamed of losing her heart to Guy Arbnth- 
not. And yet she had lately made it seem (she 
who dealt in no idle plaints and confessions) as if 
her secret life had grown a fitful battle against 
despair. 

Miss Gabriella wiped away her tears of self-com- 
miseration, and did so, perhaps, with a vague ex- 
pectancy regarding other more generous ones that 
she might soon be called upon to shed. She had 
swiftly decided that she must find Brenda straight- 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 238 

way and use les grands moyens in forcing the girl 
to explain her latent misery. The mixture of 
indignation and compassion harbored just now 
within the bosom of this lady was no less curious 
than conflicting. She desired both to scold her 
niece and to console her, both to assail her with 
fresh tirades and to cheer her with improvised 
sunshine. There had always lurked something 
in Brenda’s personality that had balked insight. 
Veils had been withdrawn, as it were, but other 
veils had remained behind them, shrouding some 
sort of inmost spiritual shrine. There had been 
times when Miss Gabriella felt afraid of her ; she 
had suggested powers of daring, possibly of des- 
peration, that waited, restive and ardent, the stab 
of the circumstantial spur. Then, again, her nature 
had worn the nullity of a cloud- wrapped moon ; it 
had irritated by its lethargic and nebulous present- 
ment. But always a real fondness had hung in- 
alienable round the aunt’s estimates and impres- 
sions. To comprehend that Brenda was now stung 
by some covert misery dealt self-contradictory 
pangs. Miss Gabriella took her way to the room 
of her niece with pity and censure waging the 
oddest of mental wars. 

But Brenda’s door was locked. It might have 
been that she had heard the coming steps of her 
kinswoman. Miss Gabriella knocked several times, 


234 A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE, 

and received no answer. Then she turned the 
knob of the door quite clatteringly. 

“ Brenda ! ” she called . . but still no answer 
followed. 

“ Brenda,’’ she again said ; “ it’s I. Let me in. 
I wish to say a few more words. I don’t mean 
that I’m going to be cross. I only want to see you 
for a little while. You surely can’t and Avon't 
keep your door closed against me like this, at a 
time when your poor father’s death has so lately 
left us all alono in the world together ! . . My dear 
girl, if you’re angry at me, let us have it out and 
be friends afterward. Certainly that’s the best 
way. So, come, now, open your door and — ” 

Here Miss Gabriella paused, for the clear sound 
of the lower front-door bell reached her. Not 
long ago she had sent the one servant of their little 
household off somewhere on a needful errand. She 
gave the shut portal of Brenda’s bedroom a wistful 
glance, and went downstairs to answer this rather 
imperative bell-peal. 

The new-comer proved to be Guy. As he en- 
tered the hall he struck his observer as agitated, 
though somewhat unnaturally calm. “ I wish 
very much to see Brenda,” he said. “ Will you tell 
her that I’m waiting here and cannot go until I 
have seen her.” 

Miss Gabriella’s heart leapt with exultation. 


A UA VGHTER OF SILENCE. 


235 


This beloved union might not turn out a distress- 
ful failure, after all ! 

“ I’ll tell her, Guy,” she responded. “ I don’t 
know what answer she’ll send . The disturbed 
lady was about to say much more than this, but 
somehow a glance at Guy’s face restrained her. 

He walked into the parlor, while nodding his 
head several times with short and quick motions. 
After he had disappeared Miss Gabriella went 
upstairs in palpitant anxiety. 

“ She’ll never see him — never, never ! ” thought 
this most concerned of ambassadresses. But “ She 
must see him, she must — I’ll break that door open 
if she refuses ! ” came the rapid ensuing reflection. 

Guy waited nearly ten minutes. At last he' 
heard a step on the stair and believed that he 
recognized it. He proved right; it was the step 
of Brenda. She entered the room in her usual 
quiet way and faced him without a symptom of 
discomposure. 

“ Brenda,” he began, “ I’ve considered what 
passed between us an hour or two ago.” 

“ Yes.” 

“ You said that you intended to visit that man 
at his cell in the county -jail.” 

“ I said so,” she replied, “ and I meant it.” 

If she had cared for the achievement of any 
conquest over him his manner might now have 
brought her victorious thrills. He looked not only 


236 


A DAirGHTFii OF SILENCF, 


conciliatory but very humble as he again spoke. 

“ Would . . would a compromise be possible ? 
I’m ready to make one, if you’ll consent.” 

“ A compromise ? ” she questioned, with no 
haughtiness, yet with not a touch of complaisance. 

‘‘Yes. This sort of a compromise : If you go, 
you go with me.” 

She kept silence for nearly two good minutes 
while he watched her. Then she said, in new and 
freezing tones : 

“ Do you mean that you are to be in the cell 
while I speak with him ? ” 

“ Ah ! ” he cried, with a sudden glance and 
gesture of suffering that he instantly afterward 
controlled. 

“ Do you make that the condition ? I — I feared 
you would I I foresaw it — I dreaded it! ” 

She moved her head wearily. “ Never mind, 
then,” she returned. “ Let there be no conditions — 
no compromise.” 

“ Brenda, Brenda ! ” he groaned, with a second 
rush of self-abandonment that he once more speed- 
ily checked. “Yes,” he went on, “I do make that 
the condition. I must and I do.” 

“ Very well, then. I refuse it.” 

“ You . . you wish to be alone in the cell with 
that creature ! Have you anything so private to 
say to him ? ” 


A DAUGBTUB OF SILENCE. 237 

“ I do not care that there should be a listener — 
a third party. That is all.” 

“ But they will not let you see him alone. Or, 
at least, it is very improbable.” 

“ Not before his conviction, I should say.” 

“ Ah,” broke from Guy, “ how you must have 
been thinking it all over ! ” 

She moved toward the threshold of the room. 
“ I was foolish to have come down at all,” she said. 
“We had already parted from one another. Every- 
thing was ended.” 

“ And you were entirely satisfied.” 

“I had got free, as far as that, goes, and it 
brouglit relief. I wasn’t compelled any longer to 
obey your whims.” 

“ If you had loved me — ” he began. “ But no ; 
I’ll not breathe a word of that sort ; it would be 
lost upon you. How can I give you what I have 
given — the passion, the worship, the devotion — 
getting nothing in return? Yes; I’m wrong; I do 
get something in return — a contempt that you 
scarcely take the trouble to conceal.” 

She stood near the door, watching him as com- 
posedly as if he were prophesying a rainy night. 

“ And you wish me to stay here and listen to talk 
like this ?” she said. “ When have I treated you 
with contempt ? It is you who have treated me 
so. My desire to do a certain thing is intensely 
strong. Because you condemn it you not only 


238 


A DA UGIITER OF SILENCE. 


make our engagement impossible, but you wear 
you will never speak to me again. Only a short 
while after the delivery of this oath, however, you 
re-appear and expect me to bear quietly your out- 
burst of petty jealousies. . . . Now, for the very 
last time, good-bye. Once and finally, all is over. 
I—” 

‘‘ Brenda ! no ! no ! ” he cried. He hurried 
toward her, and by main force held her struggling 
in his arms. But she had wholly conquered him ; 
though he had become her physical captor, he had 
also become in all other ways her bounden slave. 
“ I can’t let you leave me like this,” he went wildly 
on. “ I’ll do anything you ask, if you’ll only go 
with me to the prison. You shall see him alone — 
I’ll wait outside. No doubt I can manage that 
your meeting with him shall be quite undisturbed 
for a little while.” Here he literally sank on his 
knees and caught her dress with both hands, kiss- 
ing it in the extremity of his unmanned and delir- 
ious entreaty. “ Hear me, Brenda,” he pursued ; 
“ don’t turn from me. What I beg of you is so 
slight a favor. Let me go with you — that is all I 
Then if people find out that you have gone and 
sneer at you because of it, they must allow that I 
sanctioned your going — I, the man you are to 
marry ! ” 

She looked down at him. His eyes were stream- 
ing with tears. No answer came from her com- 


A DA UGHTER OF SILENCE. 


239 


pressed lips. If she had required any avowal from 
him of the sorcery with which he was enslaved, 
this moment of grovelling self-surrender would 
have made it clear to her. 

“ Speak to me, speak to me, Brenda ! ” he per- 
sisted. “ Oh, my God, do you mean to desert me ! 
I can’t give you up. I’m a fool — a dolt. Despise 
me for being so; I don’t care, so long as you will 
not make my future life a horror by leaving me ! ” 

Quite slowly, after a brief interval, she lowered 
one of her hands toward him. He caught it be- 
tween both his own and covered it with kisses and 
tears. 


240 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


XVIII. 

Three days after this, Allaire sat silent and 
sombre in his cell at the county-jail. Strangely 
enough, he had felt, until a few hours ago, the 
keenest and most refreshing sense of relief after 
his final arrest. But ever since awakening on the 
morning of this particular day he had been visited 
by thoughts and tremors that caused him to dread 
what pangs might be born from future solitude 
and immurement. Like the chill wrought by some 
icy mist, despair began to creep through his blood. 
Tlie same unnerving spell which had woven its 
dusky meshes about his spirit just before he was 
arrested, now again beset liim with insidious power. 
His trial would bring him odious and tedious pub- 
licity, ending how? Perhaps in the scaffold — per- 
haps in a life that must thenceforward drag itself 
along like a hurt snake. He had been poor and of 
no account before his crime ; what might he not 
become if cast forth by the law with its brand of 
shame on his flesh? But on the other hand was 
there a single dim chance that his neck could pos- 
sibly get clear of the noose ? Had he not, in the 
strange ecstasy that swayed him after his seizure, 
spoken words which were already on record against 
him as damnably incriminating ? Besides, was 
there not evidence enough without them ? Ah, 


A DA TIGHTER OF SILENCE. 


241 


yes ; death waited for him as surely as the rising 
of to-morrow’s sun from the sea. 

And such a death ! Its hideousness made any 
sort of suicide seem blissful by contrast. He began 
to brood upon the means procurable for cheating 
both dock and gibbet. Darkness descended upon 
his soul as he did so, and the very cell in which he 
sat appeared to fill with ebon vapors. The horror 
of his own mood had become no less real to him 
than its mastering motive, and that burned through 
its gloom like tiger’s eyes through thickening twi- 
light. . While he sat with an elbow pressed into 
his knee and with chin based by the palm of his 
hand, a noise jarred the deep stillness. He scarcely 
heeded it, for it meant life, and he was musing on 
the surest and most painless way to die. 

But when he marked the door of his cell unclose, 
curiosity drew him from the murky cloudland of 
his cogitations. Someone entered — a woman^ — 
though the faint light would not give him an im- 
mediate view of her face. She herself turned and 
shut the door ; none of the prison people had 
accompanied her. As she once more confronted 
him he perceived who she was, and into his unshorn, 
dark-eyed, haggard face stole a deathly pallor. 

“You didn’t expect I would come,” she broke 
silence. 

“No. . I — I supposed my mother might make 
an effort to come.” 16 


242 ^ DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

“ She’s too ill,” said Brenda. 

“ They told me something like that. Poor soul ! ” 
He heaved a long, quivering sigh. “ How horribly 
she must have suffered I ” 

“Yes; but it will soon end. I saw her this 
morning. After you were . . found, she was 
struck with paralysis. For many hours she hasn’t 
spoken. I doubt if she lives until morning.” 

He made no answer, bowing his head. She took 
a step or two nearer to him. “ If you’ve anything 
to tell me,” she went on, “ you needn’t be afraid 
of listeners.” 

“And why?” he asked, lifting his head. 

“ Because it has been arranged, as you see, that 
I shall meet you for a short time without our being 
interrupted.” 

“It has been arranged,” he repeated. “You 
mean there was some influence used ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ By whom? ” 

“ Guy Arbuthnot.” 

“ The man you are going to marry ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ He did this ! He let you come here ! And 
alone ? ” 

“ I’m not alone. He is outside, waiting for me.” 

“ Ah. . How strange ! What power you must 
possess over him ! Is he then so slavishly in love 
with you ? ” 


A JDAUGIimH OF SILENCE. 


243 


“ J udge for yourself.” 

He gazed at her for some time in silence. Then, 
very abruptly, he said; “ Why did you come ? ” 

Her lips trembled a little, as she answered ; 
“You never meant to do that awful thing, 
Ralph ! ” 

“ You came to tell me this, Brenda? ” 

“ No. But I should like to learn from you what 
was behind the whole dreadful deed.” 

He knotted his white, slender hands together 
and watched them as he let their interlaced fingers 
loiteringly divide. “ They say, no doubt, that I’ve 
confessed my guilt already,” he began. “ If I 
hadn’t more or less confessed it I might suspect 
that you hated me nowadays hotly enough to come 
here and worm out the truth from me. . . But 
never mind that. . . You can’t guess why those 
blows were struck ? You really have no knowledge 
why?” 

“No positive knowledge,” she replied. “ I’ve 
imagined so many different reasons. But always 
I’ve felt certain of one thing: you never entered 
that room as a mere vulgar thief.” 

He started, and a fleeting light leapt from the 
dusk of his eyes. “ You’re right — ah, so right ! ” 
At once, after this, he spoke a number of sentences 
with haste yet extreme clearness. 

“ You believed a . . a fable like that ! ” she fal- 
tered, when he had ended. 


244 A DAirGI{Ti:ii OF SILENCE. 

“ Oh, I was mad,” he replied — “ mad with greed. 
They turned out the merest trash — the riff-raff of 
a chemist’s potterings.” 

“ I might have told you as much,” was her re- 
sponse, while visibly she repressed a shudder. 
“And for this you killed him?” 

“No,” he said, with a tragic stress on the word 
that seemed born as much of his burning eyes as 
his husky voice. “ I killed him to save my own 
life.” . . Once again he spoke at length to her, and 
in a limpid, succinct style. She listened with knit 
brow and parted lips. 

“ It’s all plain now,” she finally said, drawing a 
great breath, “ all plain as day.” 

He was looking at her with an excessive fixity 
as he next spoke. “ One thing is to me not plain 
at all. I mean, your real motive in coming here. 
It was not simply to learn what I’ve just told you. 
Am I wrong in this belief? ” 

“ No ; you’re right. I did not come here simply 
to learn what you’ve just told me. 

“ With what other purpose, then ? ” 

“ I pitied you. . .” 

He gave the thinnest and chillest of little laughs. 
“You once — but no matter. Go on.” 

“ I pitied you, and I wanted to show you my 
pity in the only way that would be to you of the 
slightest profit.” 

She had drawn a great deal closer to him, and 


A DAC^GHT^B OF SlLENCK ‘245 

he could see that her mouth, try hard as she would 
to keep its pale curve a firm one, twitched oddly 
at the corners. 

“ What way ? ” he asked. 

“ This.” 

She drew forth the knife with which he had 
killed her father. 

Doubtless he did not recognize the weapon. At 
first he searched her face avidly ; then he put forth 
a hand which did not tremble in the least, though 
her own was wretchedly insecure. He took the 
knife from her grasp, and stared down at it for a 
moment. Suddenly, with a quick upward look, he 
said; 

“ It was the greatest kindness you could do me, 
Brenda ! ” 

“ It seemed to me the only way,” she answered. 

“ I didn’t deserve it of you.” 

“ No.” 

A smile of frightful irony lit briefly his ravaged 
face. “ This is returning good for evil, then I Ah, 
a friend in need ! Brenda.” 

“ Yes, Ralph.” 

“ I thank you. I do, with all my soul ! ” 

“ Don't thank me. There’s too much mockery 
in that. But you feel, don’t you, that the future 
hasn’t a ray of hope ? ” 

“ Not one.” 

There was more silence, but it now seemed to 


246 


A DAITGETIJE OF SILENCF. 


both as if their looks audibly spoke. He extended 
his hand until it touched the tips of her fingers. She 
recoiled, as if an electric shock had pushed her 
backwards, and then, with a faint sob, she rushed 
to him and flung herself between his opening arms. 


A UAUGUTEU OF SILEFICE. 


24T 


XIX. 

Guy was slowly pacing a little dull, plain apart- 
ment at the end of the prison-corridor through which 
Brenda had passed. His face was ashen ; his lips 
were pressed tightly together. He had endured, 
of late, a drastic self-humiliation, and he had em- 
erged from it mentally torn and bleeding. The 
prison authorities had consented that he should 
wait for Brenda in this bare and ugly little room ; 
and, though he had bribed with that liberality which 
all American officials demand from their corrupters, 
he did not dare to doubt that the visit paid Allaire 
by Theodore Monk’s daughter would soon become 
a choice newspaper scandal. 

He was miserably unhappy, and yet astrange tingle 
of gratitude still sent its vibrations through his 
being. Brenda had consented to accept a truce and 
to re-permit their engagement, with its near pros- 
pect of marriage. He constructed for himself a 
solemn little formula of patience and resignation. 
His impromptu optimism was like an ill -painted 
rainbow that held all the seven complementary col- 
ors and yet presented none of them just as nature 
devises it. He had assured himself that his com- 
ing days were to be divine in their realizations and 
fruitions. But under the weight of such artificial 
consolement his doubt struggled like some vigorous 
life which resists being smothered. 


248 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


Brenda had already tarried in the adjacent cell 
longer than he had expected of her. He had now- 
become not merely impatient; the spur of jealousy 
was dipping deep. He felt a certain grim satisfac- 
tion when one of the turnkeys — a rough but not 
unkindly man — joined him and said that orders had 
been given for the lady to quit Allaire’s cell forth- 
with. 

“Very well,” he returned. “Shall I go there, 
or will you? ” 

The turnkey moved down the corridor with a 
nod at once vague and decisive. But as he did so 
he met Brenda, emerging from the cell. What 
now happened Guy clearly saw, and yet not until 
long afterward did any memory of it recur to him. 
The turnkey passed Brenda and soon paused at the 
door of the cell she had just quitted. He did not 
cross the threshold, liowever, but simply caught 
the knob and thrust a heavy key into the lock, 
Having thus made the door fast once again, he 
walked onward, and presently disappeared. 

Meanwhile, as Brenda approached Guy he saw 
that kind of change in her which caused him anx- 
iously to ask : “ Are you unwell ? ” 

She did not answer, but sank into one of the 
chairs, and leaned her head against the opposite 
wall, closing her eyes. He went very near to her, 
laying his hand on her arm. But she suddenly 
I'ose, shook the hand off and receded several steps. 


A DA UGETEE OF SILENCE. 


249 


“ What is it, Brenda ? ” he said again, going near 
to her, though she repelled him by a slight yet 
meaning gesture. 

“ Don’t touch me,” sped her answer. “ I — - 
Well, never mind . . don’t touch me.” 

‘‘You’re angiy again?” he questioned, with a 
pang of self-abasement, even while seized by the 
impulse to stoop his very neck beneath her feet 
and let her trample on it as whim should bid. 
“ Something I’ve done has displeased you . . or — 
or something that has passed in yonder? Which 
is it, now? Tell me — pray, tell me ! ” 

“ No ; I’m not angry,” she returned, her voice 
ringing strangely hollow to him, though she had 
not raised it beyond its usual key. “You’ve been 
very kind — very generous — very noble. I thank 
you with all my heart — and it’s a heart that some- 
times must have seemed to you like a stone.” 

He perceived now that she was amazingly alter- 
ed ; he could , not explain just why or how, and 
yet the novelty in her mien and tone almost ter- 
rified him. 

“You are not well!” he insisted. “What has 
happened to you? What has Ae told you? The 
meeting you’ve held with him has been more than 
you could bear ! ” 

She bowed her head. He gazed at her for a 
short time, and while he did so agony seemed to 
blanch his cheek and stiffen his lips. 


250 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


“ Brenda ! ” he said, and as though he were tear- 
ing the words, live and blood-stained, from his 
heart, “ you love that man ! I see it as a certainty 
. . . there can be no doubt.” 

‘‘ It is true,” she replied, raising her head. “ It 
is true — or was.” 

“ Was? ” he echoed. 

She pointed down the corridor. ‘‘ This jailer I 
met just now — he didn’t go into the cell ; he only 
locked the door when I’d left it. Did you notice ? ” 

Guy failed to catch the real drift of what she had 
said, and possibly because he waited a response 
with which this had no apparent connection — one 
that should yield him, if such result were conceiv- 
able, a pain still more devilish than she had already 
dealt. 

“ Tell me the whole truth,” he said, with misery 
making his speech a husky semitone. “ I’ll bear 
it ; I promise you I’ll bear it, and not blame you in 
the least ! ” 

She smiled forlornly, and shook her head. “ There 
are some things you could not bear — even you.” 

He lifted both hands, clenched them, and then 
let them fall. “ Brenda. . You don’t mean. .’ ? ’ 

“ I mean that for three years before I met you, 
I’d been Ralph Allaire’s mistress.” 

The floor swung under Guy’s feet. For the first 
time in his life it seemed to him that he was losiiisr 

o 

consciousness. Brenda’s form appeared to sway 


A DAlTGHmn OF SILENCE. 251 

and recede, while the wall behind her melted into 
blankness. But what tranquillized all this tur- 
moil was her voice, as it spoke in accents and lan- 
guage which he had never until now remotely 
guessed that she could use. 

Her entire past personality dropped away from 
her like a discarded mantle. She was no longer the 
Brenda whom he had known. Her body became 
infused with some new electric life. Her composure 
and coldness had so absolutely ceased that to think 
of them was to feel they might have been worn as 
the subtlest and most insolent of hypocrisies. She 
was no more a daughter of silence, but rather the 
child of passion, sin, repentance, defiance, anguish. 
To look upon her was to witness the travail of a 
tortured soul. This revelation that she now reck- 
lessly gave was horrible to him who watched it as 
would have been the transformation into fiery sen- 
tience of nature’s most mystic or slumberous ele- 
ments ; it was like the emergence of a demoniac 
face from a night-wrapped pool — like the rising of 
a white-cheeked spectre from pallors of snow — like 
the gray stem of a tree becoming suddenly mobile 
and serpentine. There had been a touch of exag- 
geration, of extravgance, in her former repose ; there 
was the flame, the flash of both in her present fer- 
vors. They resembled those fitful lights which pul- 
sate through a great sluggish cloud when it hangs 
in heaven on a stagnant summer evening, and 


252 ^ BAXJGBTEB OF SlLENCF. 

abruptly show chasms and corridors the gaze has not 
dreamed of till their phantom reaches burst upon 
it. 

The torrent of her words had no loudness, but 
it was terribly fierce. He stood aghast and spell- 
bound while he heard her. This unimagined new- 
ness and difference in her awed him. He felt as if 
she had died and come back to earth again a re- 
incarnated ghost. Her very features were changed ; 
he fancied that he could see in them a maturity, 
an unvirginal ripeness, that till now had wholly 
slipped his note. Not only had every trace of in- 
nocence left her beauty, but it quivered and tow- 
ered before him with an air that was in itself a 
scoff at maidenhood. 

“ Yes,” she went on, after speaking those few 
words, which had not meant less of calamity to 
Guy than if a lightning-bolt had laid her dead be- 
fore his eyes — “ that was my life with him for three 
years . . for three years. I think no one guessed 
— ^not even his mother. She was ill so often, and 
when I went in and spoke with her at her bedside, 
she would not dream but that I had just called for 
a little while, out of pity, with her son . . . I’d 
begun to feel a great dread of what the end would 
be when I met you. He had sworn again and 
again to marry me ; but now I saw that he had 
never loved me as I loved him, and that the vast- 
ness of bis vanity made him a slave to himself. He 


A DA UGIITER OF SILENCE. 253 

was always giving poverty as an excuse for his 
delay. But with all my doubts I still tried to trust 
him, and succeeded after a fashion of my own. It 
was only to pique him, to rouse his jealous resist- 
ance, that I let you pay me court. One day I met 
him and told him of your wish to make me your 
wife. His treatment, then, was the worst agony 
I’ve ever known. I thought it would kill me ; I 
came home and fainted dead away at my aunt’s 
feet. He advised me to take you for my husband; 
he said I would be insanely foolish to refuse you. 
I had expected to have him beg that I would not 
d ream of such a step ; I had hoped that he would 
deluge me with new devotion — that he would hate 
you as a foe to his future happiness and throw his 
arms about me in horror at the thought of my 
deserting him. When I realized his coldness the 
sky and the earth seemed to clash together. I 
don’t know how I hid from you my awful pain. 
Aunt Gabriella was always moaning to me about 
our slender store of money and the chances that 
we might soon be beggars. I had never known 
what ambition meant ; I had never truly lived un- 
til I loved Ralph, and now that I had lost him time 
weighed like lead on my spirits. If you hadn’t 
been so eager I would not have yielded to you. I 
hated the lie that I was acting, but since you took 
all effort from the acting of it I gave you tame 
compliance in return. Besides, there was father. 


254 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 


there was my aunt; I would be serving them, 
changing want into wealth, sending away the 
hungry wolf that prowled and snarled at our door- 
step. But after I’d plighted faith with you my 
days were like the links of a claukiiig chain. I 
couldn’t love you ; I’d never loved any soul on 
earth but him. I loved him still he d insulted 
me, disgraced me, stamped on me, but I loved him 
still . . . You can guess what my sufferings were 
when he did that frightful deed. It was lust of 
gain that made him do it — I’ve lately heard 
how the whole thing happened. He told me a 
little while ago that he’d written out some sort of 
paper that would explain why he stole up there 
while father was absent and broke into the chest. 
But, though the law would never have pardoned 
him — though he’d either have been hanged or else 
buried in a prison for years — still, he was not a 
mere brutal murderer . . I’d his word for that, 
and I knew it was truth, as I know my own shame 
and your honor . . o You’re noble, and some day all 
this dreadful business will cease to haunt you and 
hurt yoti. For a time you’ll suffer, but at last it 
will die out of your heart and almost out of your 
memory as well . . . You’ll marry that bright, 
clear-headed girl, Agatha, who loves you and was 
keen enough to see that I didn’t. She’ll become 
your consolation, and cold as I’ve been to you it’s 
a real joy for me to think so . , . Here I speak 


265 


A DAUGHTER OF SILENCE. 

on wildly, and my own voice sounds as if it came 
from someone else’s lips. But though my brain’s 
on fire and my heart feels as if it were bursting 
from my breast, I — I must go on and tell you more 
—a little more. I must tell you how I went in 
yonder with only one wish— that he would take 
the aid I’d brought him . . and that aid was death. 
He was glad to get it. He lies there in his cell, 
now, stabbed througli the heart. But I did not 
kill him . . he died by his own hand. He chose 
that , it was better. God help him — God help us 
both! I brought away the blade that freed him — 
his mother gave it me— she’d found it and kept it— 
he killed poor father with it. The thirst of its 
edge isn’t slaked yet. He was right : only fools 
live on when the whole world has growir to them 
no better than a naked bone to a starveling. He’d 
lost all in his way ; I’ve lost all in mine . . So, for- 
give me, Guy . . be merciful and forgive me ! . . .” 

“ Brenda ! ” Guy shouted, springing toward her. 

But he broke too late the bonds of his dismay. 
As he reached her she giddily reeled, and when he 
had caught her and knelt beside her it was to see 
her eyes already filming from the mortal blow she 
had struck herself. 


THE END. 







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